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Two volumes of the stories of H. C. Bunner were published last year. The addition of two more volumes makes complete a collection of his stories in four books of uniform make-up. The first of the new volumes contains “Short sixes” and The suburban sage; the second, More “Short sixes” and The runaway Browns.
“Good paper and binding, and wide margins.”
“All these gently satirical tales and the purely humorous ones are more worth while, incidentally, as mirrors of the past, but first and foremost as good short stories.” Doris Webb
BURBANK, EMILY.Woman as decoration.il*$2.50 (6½c) Dodd 391 17-29164
A book on costume, illustrated with thirty-three plates. The foreword says that the book is intended as a sequel to “The art of interior decoration,” by Grace Wood and Emily Burbank. “Having assisted in setting the stage for woman, the next logical step is the consideration of woman herself, as an important factor in the decorative scheme of any setting,—the vital spark to animate all interior decoration, private or public. ... Contemporary woman’s costume is considered, not as fashion, but as decorative line and colour.” (Foreword) The book has been planned also to meet the demand for a handbook on costuming for fancy dress balls, etc. The scope of the illustrations ranges from studies of Greek vases to portraits of Mrs Vernon Castle.
“It expounds no philosophy of clothes—it is technical rather than philosophic—and it has no claim to being regarded as ‘literature’; and yet one feels that it should be recommended. It teaches the art of using an old weapon in a new cause.”
BURGESS, GELETT.Mrs Hope’s husband. il*$1 (4c) Century 17-23049
When Mrs Hope became a well-known novelist and was sought out by many clever people, her husband, an able lawyer, ceased to interest her. He regained her love and his own self-respect by courting her a second time, through letters, under an assumed name. The story is being dramatized by a well-known playwright.
“A delightfully humorous comedy of manners and character.”
“High-class comedy, graceful, skillful, entertaining, and always clever. Its skillfulness is especially manifest in the artful legerdemain with which the author probes into the deeps of the human soul without seeming to be doing more than skimming over its surface.”
“Mr Burgess’s humor and satire are delightfully keen; but apart from this he tells a dramatic little tale that provokes a lively sympathy and interest throughout.”
BURKE, EDWARD.My wife.*$1.50 Dutton 17-23980
This book is the “autobiography of a middle-aged man. Although outsiders show a full appreciation of his wife’s looks and good qualities, he imagines that he cherishes a romantic passion for a flame of his boyhood, till the lady in question reappears on the scene after twenty years, and he finds himself disillusioned concerning her.”—Ath
“Clever and amusing.”
“Mr Burke’s feeling for character is almost, if not wholly, as noteworthy as is his quality of humor in the handling of it.” D. L. M.
“Mr Burke has turned out a humorous little story that makes excellent reading. Despite its war atmosphere, it is done in the spirit that ‘while the big things crash around us, the lives of those of us who are out of it go on much the same.’”
BURKE, THOMAS.Limehouse nights.*$1.50 (3c) McBride 17-22292
“Limehouse, that district down by the West and East India docks, is not a pleasant part of London, and there is nothing pleasant about any one of the fourteen stories in this volume, each of which has its scene laid in that region. Most of them are grim tales, tales of cruelty, bestiality, horror, and fear.” (N Y Times) Contents: The Chink and the child; The father of Yoto; Gracie Goodnight; The paw; The cue; Beryl, the Croucher and the rest of England; The sign of the lamp; Tai Fu and Pansy Greers; The bird; Gina of the Chinatown; The knight-errant; The gorilla and the girl; Ding-Dong-Dell; Old Joe.
“One of the most frankly and brutally realistic books that has appeared in our tongue in a long time. ... But such a description does not convey the whole truth. The fact is that Burke has cast a glamour over his pages that prevents his stories from being merely studies in the sordid and the morbid. He has seen things with sharp vision and he has etched them just as clearly. But somehow also he makes you feel that he has viewed life with pity and tenderness and loving comprehension.” Milton Bronner
“Not pour les jeunes, these heart-rending stories of London’s Chinatown; but for the stalwart reader they are full of cleansing and noble pity and terror. ... Amid erotomaniacs, satyrs and sadists—and if the full meaning of those ghastly terms escapes you, be thankful—he seizes scraps of splendid courage, beauty and pathos. The poor little gifts of those eastern pavements are the undying memory of his book. ... If you dare to face the human heart as it really is, do not miss ‘Limehouse nights.’” C. D. M.
“Mr Burke’s passing repute comes from the tales of terror which the libraries were compelled to bar from their shelves; but to those who have some respect for the English tongue and for whom Walter Pater has not lived in vain, Mr Burke will always possess an attraction because he has written well his slight sketches of London life. ... These ‘Limehouse nights’ appeared in three of the most interesting periodicals of England: the English Review, Colour, and the New Witness.” G. V. Seldes
“He has made a new sensation in war-time England, avid of spicy diversions. Mr Bennett has praised his book, Mr Wells has lauded its ‘romantic force and beauty.’ ... There is no fresh note of inspiration here; at best, there is a fresh trick.”
“The stories are well told, and have their full share of that curious fascination which so often goes hand in hand with horror. And here and there comes a touch of beauty, a glimpse of real love, like a flower growing from a cranny in the rocks. ... ‘The paw’ [is] an intensely painful tale of a tortured child—almost too painful to read. ... Perhaps the best of all the tales in the volume, however, is ‘The bird,’ a powerful imaginative story, as grim and as brutal and as hideous as its fellows, but with a certain artistic quality which lifts it above them.”
“Taken as a whole, it is one of the books that would better not have been written.”
“The material was so unique that we quarrel with Mr Burke’s misuse of it. In place of the steady, equalized light which he should have thrown on that pestiferous spot off the West India Dock-road, he has been content for the most part with flashes of limelight and fireworks. ... ‘The paw’ is not a story, but a piece of brutal, horrifying, useless writing.”
BURLEIGH, LOUISE.Community theatre in theory and practice. il*$1.50 (4½c) Little 792 17-25292
A valuable book for students of modern drama which breathes the spirit of the new democracy. The writer in her first chapter quotes a statement of J. R. Seeley’s, “Three ties by which states are held together are community of race, community of religion, and community of interest.” In the course of a thoughtful examination she shows that in America today we have no community of either race or religion. She concludes that “for a unifying force we must find a living expression of a great common ideal: we must depend upon a community of interest: we must find an institution in which great and small can find expression.” The eleven chapters that follow enlarge upon the fitness of the community theatre to perform the desired service and the practical success so far achieved. Mr Percy MacKaye contributes a prefatory letter.
“‘The community theatre’ treats the drama earnestly and endearingly, though somewhat scrappily, from the point of view of its social qualities and the emotional needs of the community.” Algernon Tassin
“Miss Burleigh has produced a rather dull work about an intrinsically keen subject. She fails to recognize the necessary spontaneity of the movement. But her earnestness and enthusiasm cannot fail to win the reader’s own sympathy.”
BURNET, JOHN.Higher education and the war.*$1.50 Macmillan 378 (Eng ed 17-18365)
“In his ‘Higher education and the war’ Prof. John Burnet, now dean of the faculty of arts in the University of St Andrews, deals primarily with the conditions of education in Scotland, but his observations bear none the less on his own university, Oxford, and indeed on our American institutions, to which he makes frequent reference.” (Nation) “He states that most of his criticisms were published in 1913 and ‘are not, therefore, unduly influenced by the war.’ That they have been somewhat influenced thereby is thus admitted; this is the chief way the war comes in, for the work is mainly an appreciative account of the German system of higher education. As such it will be useful if only to show those people who are ignorant of the fact ... that this system is more completely based on the ‘humanities’ than that of any other country.” (Nature)
“The work of a master in small compass. Written with a delightful limpidity, in a spirit at once shrewd and idealistic, it is full of real knowledge and wise comment as to the working of higher education, not only in England and Scotland, but in Germany, in France, and in the United States.”
“An important work for educators. ... The first chapter, on German kultur, should be interesting to many who are not concerned with higher education.”
“This is a most thorough, sane, and scientific piece of work. ... This is the best work on education we have seen for a long time.” P. J.
“Not the least valuable part of the treatise is the lucid description of the actual scheme of studies in the German higher schools and universities, and the impartial analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the system, with reference to the systems prevailing in Scotland and England. ... His arguments for the humanities, while neither narrow nor exaggerated, are extremely cogent.”
“Like most other humanists, Prof. Burnet holds that an education based upon the acquisition of knowledge which is of no value in after life is more useful than one based on knowledge which is of permanent value. ... Prof. Burnet’s contentions are not without such discrepancies as are inseparable from the pursuit of a weak line of argument.” E. A. Schäfer
“He shows a much more intimate knowledge of the details of the German system than do most writers. ... Perhaps the most valuable part of the book is to be found in the pages in which Professor Burnet shows that, however in appearance the Prussian gymnasium and other schools still continue on the old lines, the action of the Prussian state has really completely changed and warped the whole spirit.”
BURNETT, FRANCES (HODGSON) (MRS STEPHEN TOWNESEND).White people.il*$1.20 (6c) Harper 17-5128
A little story that touches delicately on the supernatural and evidence of life after death. The heroine, who spends a lonely but happy childhood, in an old feudal castle in Scotland, has a gift of seeing things denied to others. She is grown up when she first learns that her “white people” are not visible to other eyes. To her, thru this power or gift, the dead are not dead, and because of this she is able to bring comfort to others. The story was published in Harper’s Magazine, December, 1916—January, 1917.
“Appeared in Harper’s Magazine.”
“Mrs Burnett has not hitherto done anything with so sustained a note of simplicity and sincerity; moreover, she has here employed the brevity that is the test as well as the achievement of art. By this means she has accomplished that rare result, genuine pathos. The delicate, touching beauty of the one love scene, and of the closing chapter, is not paralleled in any of her former writings and is not surpassed by anything in recent fiction.”
“Mrs Burnett’s transcendentalism will probably appeal more to ‘new thinkers’ and the like than to those whose fancies range lessfreely. In any case one may enjoy its consistent setting, in the purple Scotch Highlands, and the manner of the author’s narration.”
“Mrs Burnett is always a sentimentalist, but in this instance develops a difficult theme with a fair measure of restraint.”
“A story, so simple, so natural, so humanly normal and sweet, that it must hold the reader by its sheer lovely closeness to the realities of ordinary life. Its background is exquisitely beautiful. Its theme is mystical. ... This challenge to the fear of death is a simple story of life.”
BURNS, CECIL DELISLE.Greek ideals; a study of social life.*$2 Macmillan (*5s G. Bell & sons, London) 938
“This book is mainly an attempt at an analysis of some Athenian ideals in the fifth century B. C. It is a brief, but lucid survey of Greek social life; of the Athenian religion; of the great festivals, such as the Anthesteria, Panathenaia, Dionysia, and Eleusinia; of the political ideals of Athens; of Greek moral standards; and of the ideals of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.”—Ath
“The chapter on Athenian religion is an illuminating piece of analysis. ... Mr Burns succeeds in making Greece live again, and this because he is alive himself. ... He is at his best in his criticism of Greek political thought.”
“To one who is fairly familiar with Greek literature, and has read Mahaffy on Greek life and Frazer on ancient religions, the first part of the book offers nothing new. It has, indeed, the defect of being rather too diffuse for scholars while demanding a little too much from the reader unversed in Greek. ... With the eighth chapter the discussion acquires a keener interest and a surer appeal; for here a certain psychological acumen with which the author is rather unusually gifted comes strongly into play. The analysis of the Athenian thinker of ‘the old school’ is both just and humorously acute. ... In the main an excellent description and a somewhat penetrating analysis of Greek moral ideas, the book is occasionally marred by a certain looseness of statement.”
“A discussion of Greek ideals, designed primarily for ordinary readers. It presupposes some acquaintance with Greek history and literature, but not necessarily a knowledge of the language. ... Mr Burns gives a lame excuse for his silence about the supreme artistic instinct of the Greeks. ... It is also a pity that he had not more space to deal with their religious contribution to the world’s inheritance. ... Further, he shows little sympathy with or understanding of Christian ideals, and is ready calmly to beg the most colossal questions. ... Then there are definite errors. ... Passages suggest that Mr Burns is not primarily a scholar, but a student of politics and morals in other fields who has interested himself in Greece. But they should not blind us to the merits of his book. He has covered much ground in a small compass. He is thoroughly alive himself, and treats Greece like the living force which it is. Most of what he says is indisputably true.”
BURNS, ROBERT.Sylvander and Clarinda; the love letters of Robert Burns and Agnes M’Lehose; ed. by Amelia J. Burr. il*$1.50 Doran 17-29797
A woman, shorn of illusions by a worthless husband, her brilliancy grown hard in the process, looks around for a lover “who will offer his passionate devotions at her shrine in the decent name of friendship which shall offend none of her benevolent friends. ... She wants a guest who will accommodate himself to the cramped quarters of her heart and warm them with Promethean fire.” Burns is the man she chooses and this volume brings together their letters extending over many years. The curious satisfaction which many readers find in the bared intimacies of literary folk shrivels before the larger privilege offered here of getting at Burns’s daily life, of seeing at work the quality of genius that gave the world some of its most human poetry.
“To read these letters is to be in the midst of a highly entertaining literary achievement as well as to be witness to a lively exhibition of the greatest of human passions. It is a deep and moving affair while it lasts, but little insight is necessary to discern its transitoriness. ... It must not be imagined that Cupid is their sole hero. In fact, they plunge more than once deeply into the labyrinths of philosophy and religion.” E. F. E.
“The publishers deserve hearty thanks. The book is edited with care, knowledge, and sympathy, and furnished with an introduction that is an admirable biographical essay in itself.”
BURR, AGNES RUSH.Russell H. Conwell and his work; one man’s interpretation of life.auth ed il*$1.35 (1½c) Winston 17-5422
The subject of this biography is widely known as preacher, lecturer and teacher. His is one of those romantic, and essentially American stories of success won against odds. He began life on a rocky New England farm, worked his way thru college, served in the Civil war, prepared himself for the ministry and entered on a life of service that has brought a large measure of success. Dr Conwell’s famous lecture, “Acres of diamonds” is reprinted in an appendix.
“No other man in America, perhaps, has touched individually and helpfully so many lives as has Russell H. Conwell.”
“The story will inspire many a seeker after education and opportunity, inspire many a servant of humanity and stir the flagging spirits of those who faint by the way. It is a mine of material for illustration, anecdote and quotation.” L. A. Walker
“As he is a sort of national institution, by virtue of his ubiquity on the lecture platform, the general public will be glad to know that an authorized biography has appeared.”
BURROUGHS, EDWARD ARTHUR.Fight for the future; with a foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury.*1s Nisbet, London
“This is a collection of seven papers of diverse origin and for the most part spoken to audiences of various character. They do not, therefore, present a logical sequence of thought, and there are repetitions of ideas or phrases. But they have a unity of purpose, and it is rather helped than hindered by the emphasis of repetition. The purpose is partly to give some help towards understanding the religious significance of the war, and partly to urge the practical claims of a movement, influentially supported by the leaders of different religious bodies, called ‘The league of spiritual warfare.’”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
Reviewed by Bishop Frodsham
“An Oxford churchman and scholar has in such a crisis as the present a very definite task before him; and Mr Burroughs is one of those who have done most to show the world what that task is.”
BURROUGHS, EDWARD ARTHUR.Valley of decision.*$1.60 Longmans 940.91 17-15980
“The Rev. E. A. Burroughs, a thoroughgoing British patriot, presents what he calls ‘a plea for wholeness in thought and life.’ The author says the British people have been convicted through the lessons of the war of fragmentary and haphazard living, and stand in need of a philosophy of life. This philosophy he sees in the religion the British ‘have long professed and never yet practiced.’ His view is that the war has not disturbed the claims of Christ on the world, but has illustrated and reinforced them; all that remains to be done, he argues, is to acknowledge these claims and act accordingly.” N Y Times
“This is a man who has devoted the enthusiasm of a well-stored mind and an evangelistic spirit to the task of helping and keeping in touch with men and officers—especially undergraduate officers—during their great ordeal at the front. ... Mr Burroughs has a message based on independent observation, and this gives him an ample right to be heard.”
BURTON, RICHARD EUGENE.Poems of earth’s meaning.*$1.25 Holt 811 17-18038
“A midsummer memory,” the elegy in memory of Arthur Upson, published by Edmund D. Brooks in 1910, is reprinted as the first number in this volume. It is perhaps Dr Burton’s most distinguished piece of work. Other poems, many reprinted from Harper’s Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, Bellman, and other magazines complete the book. Among them are a number that justify the title given to the volume. Such are: The earth mother, Song of the open land, Spring fantasies, Aspects of autumn, etc.
“There is none of the pulsing unrest of the present in these poems, nor the disquieting struggle toward complete revelation which is found so often in the poetry of today. It brings us back quietly but unerringly to a realization of the strength and beauty of that which underlies the present and is the enduring link between the present and past and future. ... This collection of verse contains the best of Mr Burton’s poetic work during the last few years.” D. L. M.
“Professor Burton holds his old course thru his latest volume. He is untouched by recent fantasies of verse form, neither is there here any poem born of the war. Sincere work there is with no straining for emotional or linguistic effect.”
“There is no appeal for popularity in ‘Poems of earth’s meaning,’ and no high poetic gifts, but a richness of thought foreign to most modern verse.”
BURY, HERBERT.Here and there in the war area. il*$1.40 (2c) Young ch. 940.91 17-18817
A collection of papers by the Bishop for North and Central Europe. The title is well chosen, as his duties have taken the author to many parts of the war zone. Contents: Our naval division in Holland; With the wounded; “Somewhere in France”; In the trenches and firing line; Has there been a spiritual revival? Prisoners of war; “Manfully”; How the permanent chaplains “carry on”; The way to Russia through Norway and Sweden; Russia’s two capitals; With the bishops, clergy, and people of Russia; “Our gallant Russian ally.”
“During his experiences as chaplain on and near the fighting lines in Holland and in France Bishop Bury found the good for which he sought. ... Without asserting it directly, the good bishop impresses the reader as believing that there has really been a great spiritual revival on the war front. ... On the German side, also, the spirit has been working, fostered by the German Student Christian federation.”
“He writes very pleasantly, and, if we may judge from this book, has carried everywhere a saving common-sense, unbounded energy, and a cheerful disposition.”
“His general report on the treatment of prisoners on either side, which partakes of the spirit of optimism to which we have alluded, will repay study.”
BUTLER, ELLIS PARKER.Dominie Dean.il*$1.35 (2c) Revell 17-18164
“Ellis Parker Butler sympathetically recounts the large difficulties and small triumphs of Rev. David Dean in his lifelong service to a Presbyterian parish in a small Mississippi river town. It is the young minister’s first and only charge. ... Occasional dissensions within the church threaten his dismissal or enforced resignation, but he invariably triumphs in these contests. On one occasion he foregoes a call to a wider and more lucrative field in order to complete the self-imposed task of saving a young man addicted to drink. The story begins before the Civil war days, extends over several decades, and leaves the minister an old man, poor and neglected, but still possessing his childlike optimism and faith.”—Springf’d Republican
“Appeared in the Ladies Home Journal.”
“There is more than a touch of Mark Twain in its composition, without the spark that vitalizes Twain’s narrative.”
“We feel the power of ‘Our Davy’ at home and in the church, and we resent the neglect and the lack of appreciation which he received, but the characters and events which go to make up the story have no vividness; they are neither real nor logically convincing.”
“Though Mr Butler’s people are by no means badly drawn, they are not sufficiently well drawn to carry a book of this type, a book which depends altogether upon characterization. Even David Dean himself, carefully as he has been studied, does not win as much as he should of the reader’s affection and sympathy.”
“The author makes Dean a lovable, appealing personality, and effectively brings out the injustice of leaving pastors to want in their old age after a lifetime of unselfish service to their congregations. It is a well-told and very interesting story.”
BUTLER, NICHOLAS MURRAY.World in ferment.*$1.25 (3c) Scribner 940.91 17-21930
These seventeen “interpretations of the war for a new world” were delivered by the president of Columbia university between September 23, 1914 and June 6, 1917. They, therefore, follow the development of his thought during the years of the great war. In his introduction Dr Butler states: that this “is a war for a new international world and a war for a new intranational world. It is to be hoped that the new world will come to an understanding with itself about peace. ... Peace is not an ideal at all; it is a state attendant upon the achievement of an ideal. The ideal itself is humanliberty, justice, and the honorable conduct of an orderly and humane society. Given this, a durable peace follows naturally as a matter of course.” Among the addresses are: Higher preparedness; Nationality and beyond; Is America drifting? The Russian revolution; The call to service; The international mind: how to develop it; A world in ferment. The book is indexed.
Reviewed by C. H. P. Thurston
“He takes refuge in general statements, for the more general your statements the more noble they may be made to seem. His volume, therefore, is interesting not for any interpretation of our time so much as for its revelation of an anachronism—the florid oratorical mind still at work in the years 1914-17.”
“It is a tribute to President Butler’s essential statesmanship that these papers, delivered under such varying conditions, sustain as well as they do the test of reprinting. Few collections covering a like period contain so much that has proved true and wise, or, being still in the future, is still likely to justify the author.”
“The president of Columbia has much skill in phrasing sententious platitudes, especially regarding the moral aspects of business or politics. We commend this volume of addresses to all who feel that they ought to take the world seriously, but who at the same time cannot bring themselves to think very deeply about it.”
“President Butler seems enamored of this utopianism of language, by means of which the specific difficulties of a problem are resolved in an elaborate statement of the good effects which will inevitably flow from its perfect solution. In reading President Butler one aches for a specific, quantitative recommendation as one aches at a Debussy opera for a whole tone.”
“We have gone over these essays carefully, and, though we regret to return empty handed, we must sorrowfully admit that there does not seem to be anything very original or striking in any of them, though perhaps they may be regarded as good, sound, practical common sense, as that rather indefinable quantity is regarded today.” Joshua Wanhope
“His presentation and argument are very interesting. And his repeated warning to the American people that as they move forward in this new direction they must keep in mind their old ideals, is of the highest consequence. There are many suggestions and brief discussions of the means by which the movement of the nations toward closer and more harmonious co-operation can be encouraged and facilitated, so many, indeed, that this idea becomes, especially with reference to America’s part in that movement, the dominating note of the book.”
“Without any shrinking from grim facts and without any flamboyance of emotional or self-laudatory patriotism, the author makes one see a better future for the world as something real and tangible and within reasonable expectation, and he sets forth the part that this country is to play in helping on the coming of a new and better order, with a clearness and sanity that makes national duty seem near and feasible and attractive.”
“In these days when history is being made and remade in so short spaces of time, a book such as this soon loses whatever initial starting-point it may have adopted, simply for the reason that the events with which it deals are soon left in the background, displaced by newer developments.”
BUTLER, SAMUEL.Notebooks, new ed*$2 Dutton 824
The book “gives the tang of Butler’s personality, and presents in fairly compact form his comment upon man, morality, memory and design, mind and matter, pictures, books, music, cash, religion, travel, truth, translation, etc. ... He recorded his observations; he tried their effect in conversation; he rewrote them; he drew upon his store for his published books; he collected and indexed them. After his death, his friend Henry Festing Jones sorted and rearranged and expurgated them, and brought them out in 1912. Dutton republishes the volume with a brief appreciative introduction by Francis Hackett.”—Nation
“It used to be a boyhood stunt to stand on your hands and see the world upside down. Butler knew the trick well and did a deal of walking on his hands through our world of conventions. His books are integrated visions of the world thus viewed—‘The way of all flesh,’ of marriage and the family; ‘Erewhon,’ of the daily life of the English-speaking world; ‘Life and habit’ and ‘Evolution, old and new,’ of Darwinism; ‘The fair haven,’ of Christianity. ... The ‘Note-books,’ is a museum of thoughts caught on the wing. ... To thinking men and women, providing they are not too old in spirit, Butler speaks with vital directness. Not that he formulates a philosophy or solves problems or teems with information. Exactly not that. One does not accumulate: one expands. One does not become a little Butler but a larger self.” M. C. Otto
“Butler was the precursor of the critical and ironical reasoning to which religious and moral conceptions are subjected nowadays by writers of the type of Messrs Shaw and Wells. ... As an expression of personality, and pungent, individual thinking the ‘Notebooks’ continue to be worth reading, though the criticism of society, and in particular of the church, is much less effective than in ‘The way of all flesh.’”
BYNE, ARTHUR, and STAPLEY, MILDRED.Spanish architecture of the sixteenth century; general view of the Plateresque and Herrera styles. (Hispanic soc. of Am. Pub. no. 109) il*$7.50 (11c) Putnam 724 17-11801
Spanish renaissance or Plateresque architecture which forms the subject of this book is, the authors say, a distinct product from that “picturesque, semi-Moorish stucco architecture” of Andalusia which was introduced into Spanish America and which is now usually accepted as typically Spanish. The Plateresque style flourished chiefly in Castile and the purpose of this book is “to increase the appreciation of what was done in Castile, to point out its charm, and to give the student some idea of what awaits him in Spain.” The book is illustrated with eighty plates and one hundred and forty other pictures in the text.
“This book is stated to be the first to appear on renaissance architecture in Spain. The change from the Plateresque to a more frigid style under the chilling influence of Philip II is well described in chaps. 13 and 14, the latter including an interesting account and an impressive view of the vast and gloomy Escorial.”
“The book is illustrated with eighty full-page plates and 140 text-illustrations and these, without the accompanying inscriptions, give an intimate notion of the richness of the churches, palaces, and houses of Spain. ... A good many Spanish terms are used but they are allexplained and the book is filled with thrilling bits of history. It is a rare addition to the literature of architecture.”
“The book must take an honored place in every architectural library with any pretense to completeness. Not only does the volume contain more than two hundred illustrations, but many of these are carefully measured drawings, the value of which, to an architect, is greater than any photograph, however good. The text is historical as regards the style, biographical as regards its most famous practitioners, and critical in the discussion of the more famous buildings.” Claude Bragdon
“The discussion is not at all popular, indeed it is almost severely technical. The unprofessional reader requires at hand a dictionary of architectural terms to gain an adequate comprehension of the volume. ... The publishers have given us a volume worthy of their reputation, substantially bound in buckram. To own it is a pleasure; to comprehend it, a full recompense for the effort expended.”
“Their work is a welcome addition to the literature of architecture in a sadly neglected field. The architect who has Prentice’s invaluable folio volume of plates and this excellent history to go with it, possesses the material for acquiring an intelligent appreciation of a most interesting phase of the history of the renaissance in western Europe.”
“Its pages are refreshing in their clear revelation of personal contact with the country and race, and of the intimate connection between these and the architecture.”
“A rich find for students of architecture.”
BYNNER, WITTER.Grenstone poems; a sequence.*$1.35 Stokes 811 17-25234
“Many a glimpse in Mr Bynner’s poems localizes the habitation of Grenstone up under the shadow of Mt. Monadnock, but the name symbolizes more than a place in the poet’s singing; it is the deification of experience finding love, losing its earthly presence, and gaining above all the indestructible sustenance and faith of realities beyond the world. This is the golden thread upon which all these lyrics are hung.”—Boston Transcript
“His love and joy and grief and faith are expressed with much delicacy and spirituality.”
“The mistake has been made that poets almost universally make, of putting in much that is ephemeral and irrelevant to the real soul of the book, thus obscuring that precious and intrinsic quality—personality. It is in an epigrammatic lyric, of a peculiar pith and pungency, and often informed with a whimsical humour, that Mr Bynner seems to me to be most wholly himself.” J. B. Rittenhouse
“There is the suggestion here of a new Dante and a new Beatrice, in the poet’s relation to Celia. ... Nearly two hundred lyrics, touching upon an infinite variety of moods and subjects, more subtle and simply wrought, more instinct with genuine flashes of lyric beauty, subjective in the best traditional manner of English verse, than any collection produced since the present revival of poetry came into being.” W. S. B.
“Charming and delicate as the poems are, full of whim and fancy and loveliness, they are imbued above all with Bynner’s ordered passion for simplicity. It seems to me that he is sometimes almost mathematical in the development of his simplicity. He loves to strike poetic balances and make poetic classifications—almost to replace poetry by a lengthened epigram. My only wish is that he would content himself with being a very good and growing poet, instead of tending to preoccupy himself with a theory. His gift is sufficient, if he will permit it, to stand above theories.” Swinburne Hale
“A volume overflowing with lyric beauty. Pure and strong passion, a keen sense of melody, epigrammatic deftness of phrase—these are among Mr Bynner’s gifts.”
“One of the most effective things in the arrangement is the way it builds up to the final ‘Behold the man’: