R

Rae, John.Sociological theory of capital. **$4. Macmillan.

6–7791.

Descriptive note in Annual, 1906.

“His rearrangement of the text represents a great improvement over the original form. While he has employed his privilege of annotating very sparingly, such notes as he has attached are uniformly helpful.” Alvin S. Johnson.

“Dr. Mixter has done work of a valuable type in producing this volume, for, whether Rae’s economic conclusions are accepted or not, they are certainly a most stimulating contribution to the history of economics.”

Ragg, Rev. Lonsdale.Dante and his Italy. *$3.50. Putnam.

7–29016.

“To look at Italy through the eyes of Dante himself, and having looked to realise her for others, as she appeared to the poet during his sojourn upon earth, has been the chief aim of the author of this new study.... He begins with a rapid sketch of the state of Europe as a whole at what he calls the ‘critical moment of Dante’s life, the ideal state of his vision,’ passing on to concentrate his attention first on Italy, then on Florence, and finally on Dante himself, tracing his literary antecedents, calling up one after another the possibilities of his contemporary authors and of his hosts during the weary wanderings of his exile, the narrative terminating with an eloquent account of the last days at Ravenna, and of the impression caused by the news that the great genius had passed away.”—Int. Studio.

“Our chief quarrel with Mr. Ragg is on account of his trick of introducing trivialities, hardly suited to the dignity of his theme.”

“Canon Ragg is steeped to the finger tips in Dantesque lore, is thoroughly familiar with everything written by the man to whom his book is one long tribute of homage, and is gifted with an imagination so vivid that he has been able to piece together a very realistic picture of the period at which his hero lived.”

“His task is suited to his powers, which are, it must be said, not inconsiderable. He gives the delightful impression, so rarely received in these days, that he knows a great deal more than he has set down.”

“With a little more system, a greater tenacity in developing each of his themes, Mr. Ragg would have written a book to be often opened for reference after being once read for pleasure. It is a pity, that this book should be marred by many misprints in foreign words. A more serious defect is an excessive fondness for the dramatic and picturesque, which leads Mr. Ragg into baseless conjectures and striking inconsistencies.”

“Everywhere Canon Ragg writes as a man, scholarly and imaginatively dominated by his subject, and yet with a painstaking discretion which at once enables the reader to separate facts from hearsay. On one or two points, however, he shows that he has not followed the researches of Dante’s scholars as carefully as he has the half-forgotten chronicles of the poet’s contemporaries.” Walter Littlefield.

“Dr. Ragg’s narrative style, clear, compact, smooth, well fits his subject-matter.”

“Many of Mr. Ragg’s statements have that air of generalization which belongs to ideas absorbed at second-hand. He needs a course of reading, and above all a study of statutes and documents.”

“If the writer allows himself here and there a touch of fancy not altogether authorised by known facts, he never in any case sins against probability.”

Raine, Allen, pseud. (Mrs. Beynon Puddicombe).Queen of the rushes, a tale of the Welsh country. †$1.50. Jacobs.

6–35940.

Descriptive note in Annual, 1906.

“Considered as a series of pictures representing Welsh landscape and Welsh people, this book has much charm and a certain quiet interest. As a story it fails by an excessive and inartistic introduction of the marvellous.”

“Allan Raine is very sensitive to the beauty and the picturesqueness of the rugged Welsh character and Welsh scenery, and has a skillful pen in the weaving of these things into a structure of the tale. The result is to mask very pleasingly an inherent feebleness of conception and treatment.”

Raleigh, Walter Alexander.Shakespeare. *75c. Macmillan.

7–15578.

A monograph in the English men of letters series, which interprets Shakespeare to us largely from his dramas. It is in five chapters: Shakespeare, Stratford and London, Books and poetry, The theatre, Story and character, and The last phase.

“A distinct contribution to Shakesperean literature.”

“It is one of the most suggestive books on Shakespeare that this country has yet produced.”

“Even some of the most appreciative among [the critics] have considered his work too much as literature and not enough as drama. This is the chief fault in Professor Raleigh’s contribution.” Edward Fuller.

“He has produced a thoroughly safe volume on the subject of what everyone should know about Shakespeare. And when we add that he writes not as a fetich-worshipper but as a reverent and honest student, we have said enough.”

“To a layman the contrast between Professor Raleigh’s volume and the writings of Shakespearescholars generally is very astonishing. The point that, as a layman, we wish to emphasize, is that he can be read with pleasure by those who have tried to read the other books and failed.” Frank Moore Colby.

“For this little volume it is safe to predict a large degree of public favor. It reveals, it is true, many instances of bad logic and an abundant lack of system. But it is in many respects brilliant, the style is almost epigrammatic in its sententiousness, and the felicitous aptness with which the text is quoted amounts almost to a display of genius.”

“Mr. Raleigh has given us an essay, overflowing with life, crammed with suggestion, full of stimulating ideas and happy turns of phrase, and with no dull page from beginning to end. It is table-talkin excelsis, stamped with all the freshness and brightness of an original mind. This impromptu nature of Mr. Raleigh’s criticism brings with it, of course, the defect of its quantity.”

“We are delighted to find him penetrating to the root of the matter, which is that Shakespeare’s stage was a platform and not, like ours, a picture-frame, and that drama written to be played on a platform took a peculiar shape from that very fact. Alive to the fact, he seems to be dead, or only half alive, to its consequences. He has the key, nourishes it, and then, instead of using it, puts it in his pocket.”

“The book is not well constructed; and throughout, the author’s strength lies rather in stimulating comment than in logical inference.”

“Prof. Raleigh’s comprehension of this theatre and its demands lends much value to his book.”

“It is in his consideration of Shakespeare as a poet and as a creator of character that Professor Raleigh is seen at his best.” Brander Matthews.

“Professor Raleigh is not so happily untechnical as Professor Baker, and is more concerned with critical estimates, from the easy assumptions of which many of his readers will heartily dissent.”

“Though not so good a book as we might expect from him, is much better than some of the critics reckon it.” Wm. J. Rolfe.

“Dr. Raleigh manages to get within the compass of one brief volume a vast amount of information and interpretation of the immortal bard without becoming either prosy or dogmatic.”

“Professor Raleigh has really achieved some sort of balance within a scope which he recognizes from the outset to be very limited.”

“The writer of this happy volume has the art of forgetting that he is a professor.”

Ramsay, William Mitchell.Pauline, and other studies in early Christian history. *$3. Armstrong.

7–29067.

A group of fifteen essays touching upon the character of Paul, the authorship of the Acts and early Christianity in Asia Minor. They have been collected from various British magazines and are accompanied by a great number of illustrations.

“The book exhibits all those qualities which we are accustomed to look for in Professor Ramsay’s writings; freshness of standpoint, flashes of insight only possible to a scholar of rich and varied learning, unflagging zest in the handling of his subject—a zest which communicates itself to the reader—and that lucid and forcible style which has done so much to popularize the results of his investigations.” H. A. A. Kennedy.

“Many possess permanent value.”

“Since the author confessedly speaks as ‘a historian and geographer,’ one cannot fail to notice the dogmatic tone that marks some of his purely theological utterances.” George H. Gilbert.

“The title is inexact and the unity of character in the studies slight.”

“Not only does Professor Ramsay bring fresh and valuable instruction from the field of his special study, but he renders good service as a judicious moderator of the schools of critics.”

“The pages dealing with the life of St. Paul are perhaps the most interesting in the book, not only intrinsically, but because Professor Ramsay is so great an authority on the subject.”

Randal, John.Sweetest solace. $1.50. Dutton.

7–7197.

Gascoigne square, Whitborough, is made the scene of a pretty love story in which two young girls from Australia come into the square as mistresses of a board school. Here they meet a number of interesting people, differing widely in character and social position, and here the mystery of their father, who had lived his young life in this very square, is unravelled, leaving them free to marry the two young men of wealth and family who have come to love them. It is not the mystery, however, which is uppermost for interest centers around the quaint characters and their old prejudices: the social climbers, dear old Miss Blackiston, wholehearted Ben Cox, Lord Streybridge, narrow-minded Mrs. Petch, spiteful Miss Marston, and all the others.

“This is a pleasant story reproducing something of the Trollope atmosphere. But Mr. Randal lays the colours on too thickly when depicting a cad.”

*Rannie, David Watson.Wordsworth and his circle. (Memoir ser.) **$3.50. Putnam.

“Criticism, quotation, narrative, and anecdote are so woven together as to form a single piece.... Coleridge moves through the scenes, with the divine light ever waning in his eyes; Lamb banters and praises; Southey, Christopher North, Dr. Arnold, De Quincey, Scott, Rogers, Keats, come and go, speak and listen, and range themselves in proper perspective about the central, still lonely figure.”—Nation.

“Though well-read and in the main judicious, he occasionally makes odd slips in his critical remarks. The style is always graceful and dignified, and we do not hesitate to affirm that this is the best book yet written for any one who wishes to breathe, so to speak, the very atmosphere in which these men moved.”

“This is a desultory but an entertaining, and often suggestive, book on a subject which has grown somewhat worn.”

Ransom, Olive.Woman’s heart: manuscripts found in the papers of Katherine Peshconet and ed. by her executor, Olive Ransom. †$1.50. Doubleday.

6–11548.

The diary of a woman who loved a priest. “It is difficult to imagine a twentieth-century Abelard receiving letters from an American Héloïse; letters so quivering with intensity of emotion and with also a touch of classicism that would have suited well the Renaissance spirit.” (Ind.) “As for Katherine, if hers was a woman’s heart, then, indeed, is a woman a daughter of Eve. She argued through years, got what she wanted, and died for it.” (N. Y. Times.) The book “tells an interesting story, altho its hold is purely psychical.” (Ind.)

“The old arguments against the theories and practices of the Roman Catholic church, even here in America, are reiterated with amazing vivacity and freshness.”

“The book leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.”

*Ransome, Arthur.Bohemia in London. **$1.50. Dodd.

Here is presented London’s historical and present-day Bohemia with the Parisian “tinsel and sham” wanting. “The ‘Bohemia in London’ is distinctly British and not Gallic; it is founded on the same code of laws as that which prevailed in the more famous Bohemia of Paris; there is no exaggeration in its pictures and there is no suppression of realities.” (Ind.)

“His book, if not exciting, is readable enough.” G. S. S.

“I feel very confident that ‘Bohemia in London’ will prove a distinct literary success. I can say with conviction that the book gives the most life-like picture of that London quarter which the author sets himself to describe. The book is rich in humorous descriptions and portraitures, has many pathetic scenes, and gleams here and there with genuine poetic feeling.” Justin McCarthy.

“The book is entertainingly and thoughtfully written.”

Raper, Charles Lee.Principles of wealth and welfare; economics for high schools. *$1.10. Macmillan.

6–24099.

Descriptive note in Annual, 1906.

“The book contains little or nothing that is original either in material or treatment. Moreover. it does not seem at all adapted to the use for which its author intends it.”

Rappaport, Philip.Looking forward: a treatise on the status of woman and the origin and growth of the family and the state. $1. Kerr.

6–23736.

“As the preface states, ‘this book is written from the standpoint of historic materialism.’ Its aim is to show how past forms of the family and of the state have been determined by economic conditions, especially by methods of production, and to demonstrate incidentally that Marxian socialism is the only means of social salvation and the natural goal of development. The author shows considerable acquaintance with the socialist school of social and economic writers, but beyond that his acquaintance with the scientific literature of the subjects upon which he writes is very limited.”—Am. J. Soc.

“Like all socialist writers, he makes large use of Buckle and Morgan, but he seems utterly unaware of the works of later investigators which long since have made Buckle and Morgan out of date.” Charles A. Ellwood.

“It is an extremely valuable book, because it is fundamental in character and rationalistic in method of treatment. There is, therefore, no appeal to emotionalism, sentimentality or prejudice that would tend to cloud the reason or obscure the unbiased judgment.”

Rashdall, Hastings.Theory of good and evil: a treatise on moral philosophy. 2v. *$4.75. Oxford.

7–18191.

“In the first instance it is intended for ‘undergraduate students in philosophy,’ and is not supposed to assume any previous acquaintance either with ethics or with general philosophy. In the second place, it aims at working out an ethical theory which shall be in some sense a higher synthesis of Green and Sidgwick, to whose memory the book is dedicated.” (Lond. Times.) “In the first volume, Mr. Rashdall deals with the fundamental conceptions of ethics.... In the second volume the author examines what he regards as the metaphysical implications of ethics, but he hardly proves the propriety of introducing such a discussion Into a treatise on moral philosophy.” (Nation.)

“This treatise, though concerned with the investigation of profound questions, is singularly successful in its avoidance of all ponderosity and pedantry. Written in a pleasing style, it is readable throughout. The problems discussed are clearly presented, the line of argument is always developed with logical care and dialetical skill, the discussions of even the most abstract questions are uniformly lucid and illuminating. Much of the suggestive power of the work is derived from the wealth of pertinent illustration, upon his abundant store of which the author draws freely.” A. R. Gifford.

“In spite of the disadvantages incident to his plan, Dr. Rashdall has produced a very readable and useful book. Without being strikingly original his criticisms and contentions touch fundamental issues and rest upon a full knowledge of ethical thought in the past as well as of recent discussions. One of the features of the book is its fairmindedness and moderation.”

“The discussion is generally sympathetic—often entertaining, and in attention to details the author has been industrious and thorough. Yet the final impression left upon the reader is that of logical looseness and structural weakness.”

“The chief merits of his book [are] clearness and force with which the problem of morality is stated and the fearlessness with which the author follows out his own solution.”

Rauschenbusch, Walter.Christianity and the social crisis. **$1.50. Macmillan.

7–13925.

The author begins his study of tracing the relations of Christianity to the social crisis as far back as the days of the greater Hebrew prophets. He finds reasons for the “halting and groping,” conscience of Christendom, “perplexed by contradicting voices” and finds reasons for “freeing an honest man’s heart” on the maxims of the past and the imperious call of the future.

“Of less value is the later and constructive part of the work where an attempt is made to outline the immediate measures which should be taken to mitigate the evils of our time. Such questions cannot be successfully treated in the form of rhetorical appeals to somewhat vague and elementary feelings and without a mastery of technical economic reasoning which is notrevealed in the work itself.” Charles Richmond Henderson.

“There is not room here to show the successive stages by which Professor Rauschenbusch builds up his structure of thought to its culmination: we can only say that nothing in it is set down in carelessness or in ignorance, and that it cannot be ignored by any one who would understand the social thought of today.”

“Professor Rauschenbusch writes in the heat of religious zeal and with reforming passion.”

“It is a book to like, to learn from, and, though the theme be sad and serious, to be charmed with.” Joseph O’Connor.

“While its argument is strongly based on economic, historical, ethical, and religious grounds, its temper and tone, admirably dispassionate and judicial, commend it to fairminded men.”

Raven, John Howard.Old Testament introduction. general and special. **$2. Revell.

6–3543.

Descriptive note in Annual, 1906.

“The section on the ‘Text’ is rather uneven. ‘The Pentateuch in general’ is handled somewhat in detail, and always to the detriment of the modern view. We are still more amazed that a modern textbook should be published without an index of any kind. This is inexcusable.” Ira M. Price and John M. P. Smith.

Raven, John James.Bells of England; with 60 il. (Antiquary’s books.) *$3. Dutton.

7–2433.

The result of a sixty years’ study of campanology. “It is a work that can scarcely fail to give satisfaction to any who are interested in the story of bells, whether experts or novices. The Celtic, Saxon, Norman, Plantagenet, and Tudor use of bells, and the history of the later foundries are fully discussed; whilst other chapters tell of particular dedications, of change-ringing, of chime barrels and carillons, of handbells or tintinnabula, of bell usages and laws, and of the legends and poetry to which they have given birth.” (Ath.)

“The critic looks in vain for sins of commission.”

“Dr. Raven’s book puts a new and deeper meaning into a thousand familiar quotations and allusions, and makes understandable numerous rites and customs that may previously have been past over without a thought of their significance.”

“A volume highly creditable to his patient industry.”

“Mr. Raven’s book is well worth the notice of students, serious and slight, of the subject.”

“A book which should take a high place in the literature of the subject.”

Ravenel, Harriott Horry.Charleston; the place and the people. **$2.50. Macmillan.

6–42434.

A story that “has more to do with the antebellum Charleston than with the city of to-day. A great store of local history and tradition has been freely drawn upon in the preparation of this work, while the artist, Vernon Howe Bailey, has co-operated ably with the author in picturing the distinctive architectural features of South Carolina’s stately and dignified capital.” (R. of Rs.)

“It is in a fine spirit of reverence for the traditions of her home-land that Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel has written this volume.”

“The book is of peculiar interest, not only for the information it contains, but for the manner in which all is presented.”

“It has much of the haunting fascination peculiar to the old town.”

“Mrs. Ravenel writes with loyalty, deep interest, and great care for important detail. She infuses into otherwise dry history the elusive charm of a vivacious and discriminating mind.”

Ray, Anna Chapin.Ackroyd of the faculty. †$1.50. Little.

7–12975.

Ackroyd, the young professor of much intellect and worse than no family, comes in contact with a wholly new social scheme of things thru his position on the faculty of a great university. The daughter of the head of his department stands for the world of culture he has never known and the influence of these two characters upon each other forms the story of the book. In the end, of course, each finds in the other all that an early environment had failed to give.

“This is the best of the three faculty stories recently published. It is better worked out and stronger than Miss Ray’s previous work.”

“The book is charmingly written.”

“The story offers some unusual attractions to the discriminating reader.”

Ray, Anna Chapin.Day: her year in New York. il. †$1.50. Little.

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