70. THOMAS HARDY. TESS OF THE D'URBEVILLES. THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE. THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. WESSEX POEMS.
Thomas Hardy remains the greatest poet and novelist of the England of our age. His poetry, Wessex Poems, Poems of Past and Present, Time's Laughing-Stock, Satires of Circumstance, make up the most powerful and original contribution to modern verse, produced recently, either in England or America. Not to value Hardy's poetry as highly as all but his very greatest prose is to betray oneself as having missed the full pregnancy of his bitter and lovely wisdom.
He has, like Henry James, three "manners" or styles—the first containing such lighter, friendlier work, as "Life's Little Ironies," "Under a Greenwood Tree," and "The Trumpet Major"—the second being the period of the great tragedies which assume the place, in his work, of "Hamlet," "Lear," "Macbeth" and "Othello," in the work of Shakespeare—the third, of curious and imaginative interest, expresses in quite a particular way, Mr. Hardy's own peculiar point of view. The Well-Beloved, Jude the Obscure, and the later poems would belong to this epoch.
At his best Hardy is a novelist second to none. His style has a grandeur, a distinction, a concentration, which we find neither in Balzac nor Dostoievsky. Not to appreciate the power and beauty of his manner, when his real inspiration holds him, is to confess that the genuinely classical in style and the genuinely pagan in feeling has no meaning for you. No English writer, whether in prose or poetry, has ever caught so completely the magic of the earth and the quaint humors, tragical and laughable, of those who live inured to her moods; who live with her moroseness, her whimsicality, her vindictiveness, her austerity, her evasive grace.
Mr. Hardy's clairvoyant feeling for Nature is, however, only the background of his work. He is no idyllic posture-monger. The march of events as they drive forward the primitive earth-born men and women of Wessex, thrills one with the same weight of accumulated fatality, as—the comparison is tedious and pedantic—the fortunes of the ill-starred houses of Argos and Thebes. One peculiarity of Mr. Hardy's method must finally be mentioned, as giving their most characteristic quality to these formidable scenes—I mean his preference for form over color. Who can forget those desolately emphatic human protagonists silhouetted so austerely along the tops of hills and against the perspectives of long white roads?
75. JOSEPH CONRAD. CHANCE. LORD JIM. VICTORY. YOUTH. ALMAYER'S FOLLY. Published by Doubleday Page & Co. with a critical monograph, so admirably written (it is given gratis) by Wilson Follet that one longs to see more criticism from such an accomplished hand.
Conrad's work—and, considering his foreign origin and his late choice of English as a medium of expression, it is no less than an astounding achievement—is work of the very highest literary and psychological value. It is, indeed, as Mr. Follet says, only such criticism as is passionately anxious to prove for itself the true "romance of the intellect" that can hope to deal adequately with such an output. The background of Conrad's books is primarily the sea itself; and after the sea, ships. No one has indicated the extraordinary romance of ships in the way he has done—of ships in the open sea, in the harbour, at the wharf, or driven far up some perilous tropical river.
But it is neither the sea nor the tropical recesses nor the sun-scorched river-edges of his backgrounds that make up the essence of romance in the Conrad books. This is found in nothing less than the mysterious potencies for courage and for fear, for good and for evil, of human beings themselves—of human beings isolated by some external "diablerie" which throws every feature of them into terrible and baffling relief.
The finest and deepest effects of Conrad's art are always found when, in the process of the story, some solitary man and woman encounter each other, far from civilization, and tearing off, as it were, the mask of one another's souls, are confronted by a deeper and more inveterate mystery—the eternal mystery of difference, which separates all men born into the world and keeps us perpetually alone. In the case of Heyst and Lena—of Flora de Barral and her Captain Anthony—of Charles and Mrs. Gould—of Aissa and Willems—of Almayer's daughter and her Malay lover, Mr. Conrad takes up the ancient planetary theme of the loves of men and women and throws upon it a sudden, original, and singularly stimulating light; a light, that like a lantern carried down into the very Cave of the "Mothers," throws its flickering and ambiguous rays over the large, dumb, formless shapes—the primordial motives of human hearts—which grope and fumble in that thick darkness.
The style of Conrad, simpler than that of James, less monumental than that of Hardy, has nevertheless a certain forward-driving impetus hardly less effective than these more famous mediums of expression. "Lord Jim" is perhaps his masterpiece and may be regarded as the most interesting book written recently in our language with the exception of Henry James' "Golden Bowl." For sheer excitement and the thrilling sensation of delayed dénouement it must be conceded that not one of our classical novelists can touch Conrad. "Victory" remains an absorbing evidence of his power of concentrating at one and the same moment our dramatic and our psychological interest.
80. WALTER PATER. MARIUS THE EPICUREAN. STUDIES IN THE RENAISSANCE. IMAGINARY PORTRAITS. PLATO AND PLATONISM. GASTON DE LATOUR.
Walter Pater's writings are more capable than any in our list of offering, if approached at the suitable hour and moment, new vistas and possibilities both intellectual and emotional. That wise and massive egoism taught by Goethe, that impassioned "living to oneself" indicated by Stendhal, find in Walter Pater a new qualification and a new sanction.
Himself a supreme master of the rare and exquisite in style, he becomes, for those who really understand him, something more penetrating and insidious than a mere personality. He becomes an atmosphere, an attitude, a tone, a temper—and one too which may serve us to most rich and recondite purpose, as we wander through the world seeking the excitement and consecration of impassioned cults and organized discriminations.
For this austere and elaborately constructed style of his is nothing less than the palpable expression of his own discriminating days; the wayfaring, so self-consciously and scrupulously guarded, of his own fastidious "hedonism," seeking its elaborate satisfactions among the chance-offered occasions of hour, or person or of place.
Walter Pater remains, for those who are permitted to feel these things, the one who above all others has the subtlest and most stimulating method of approach with regard to all the great arts, and most especially with regard to the art of literature.
No one, after reading him, can remain gross, academic, vulgar, or indiscriminate. And, with the rest, we seem to be aware of a secret attitude not only towards art but towards life also, to miss the key to which would be to fail in that architecture of the soul and senses which is the object of the discipline not merely of the æsthetic but of the religious cult.
For the supreme initiation into which we are led by these elaborate and patient essays, is the initiation into the world of inner austerity, which makes its clear-cut and passionate distinctions in our emotional as well as in our intellectual life.
Everything, without exception, as we read Pater becomes "a matter of taste"; but the high and exclusive nature of this taste, to which no sensations but those which are vulgar and common are forbidden, is itself a guarantee of the gentleness and delicacy of the passions evoked. His ultimate philosophy seems to be that—as he himself has described it in "Marius,"—of Aristippus of Cyrene; but this "undermining of metaphysic by means of metaphysic" lands him in no mere arid agnosticism or weary emptiness of suspended judgment; but in a rich and imaginative region of infinite possibilities, from the shores of which he is able to launch forth at will; or to gather up at his pleasure the delicate shells strewn upon the sand.
85. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. MAN AND SUPERMAN.
Mr. Shaw has found his role and his occupation very happily cut out for him in the unfailing stupidity, not untouched by a sense of humor, of our Anglo-Saxon democracy in England and America. In Germany, too, there seems naïveté and simplicity enough to be still entertained by these mischievously whimsical and yet portentously moral comedies. It appears however that the civilization for which Rabelais and Voltaire wrote, is less willing to acclaim as an extraordinary genius one who has the wit to pierce with a bodkin the idolatries and illusions of such pathetically simple people.
Bernard Shaw takes the Universe very seriously. By calling it the Life-Force he permits himself to address it in that heroic vein reserved, among more ordinary intelligencies, for anthropomorphic deities. Bernard Shaw's sense of the comic draws its spirit from the contrast between clever people and stupid people, and seems to appear at its best when engaged in upsetting the pseudo-historical, pseudo-philosophical illusions of Anglo-Saxons, in charmingly ridiculous pantomimes, which the redeeming humor of that patient race has just intelligence enough thoroughly to enjoy.
If he were himself less moralistically earnest the spice of the jest would disappear. His humor is not universal humor. It is topical humor; and topical humor derives its point from moral contrast,—the contrast in this case between the virtue of Mr. Shaw and the vices of modern society.
"Man and Superman" is undoubtedly his most interesting work from a philosophical point of view, but his later plays—such bewitching farces as "Fanny's First Play," "Androcles," and "Pygmalion"—seem to express more completely than anything else that rollicking combative roguishness which is his most characteristic quality.
86. GILBERT K. CHESTERTON. ORTHODOXY.
Mr. Chesterton may congratulate himself upon being the only man of letters in England who has had the originality or the insight or the temperamental courage to adopt a definitely reactionary philosophy; whereas in France we have Huysmans, Barrés, Bourget, Bordeaux, and many others, whose persuasive and romantic rôle it is to prop up tottering altars; in England we have only Mr. Chesterton.
That is doubtless why it is necessary for him to exaggerate his paradoxes so extravagantly; and also why he is so important and so dear to the hearts of intelligent clergymen.
Mr. Chesterton's grand philosophical "coup" is a simple and effective one—the turning of everything, complacently and hilariously, upside down. One has the salutary amusement in reading him of visualizing the Universe in the posture of a Gargantuan baby, "prepared" for a sound smacking. Mr. Chesterton himself is the chief actor in this performance and wonderful pyrotechnic stars leap into space as its happy result.
Mr. Chesterton has his own peculiar "religion"—a sort of Chelsea Embankment Catholicism, in which, in place of Pontifical Encyclicals, we have Punch and Judy jokes, and in place of Apostolic Doctrine we have umbrellas, lamp-posts, electric-signs and prestidigitating clerics.
Mr. Chesterton is never more entertaining, never more entirely at ease, than when turning one or other of the really noble and tragic figures of human intellect into preposterous "Aunt Sallies" at whose battered heads he can fling the turnips and potatoes of the Average Man's average suspicion, dipped for that purpose in a fiery sort of brandy of his own whimsical wit. If we don't become "like little children"; in other words like jovial, middle-aged swashbucklers, and protest our belief in Flying Pigs, Pusses in Boots, Jacks on the top of Beanstalks, Old Women who live in Shoes, Fairies, Fandangos, Prester Johns, and Blue Devils, there is no hope for us and we are condemned to a dreadful purgatory of pedantic and atheistic dullness, along with Li Hung Chang, George Eliot, Herbert Spencer and other heretics whose view of the Dogma of the Immortality of the Soul differs from that of Mr. Chesterton.
87. OSCAR WILDE. INTENTIONS. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. DE PROFUNDIS.
"Intentions" is perhaps the most original of all Wilde's remarkable works.
His supreme art, as he himself well knew, was, after all, the art of conversation. One might even put it that his greatest achievement in life was just the achievement of being brazenly and shamelessly what he naturally was—especially in conversation. To call him a "poseur" with the implication that he pretended or assumed a manner, were just as absurd as to call a tiger striped with the implication that the beast deliberately "put on" that mark of distinction.
If it is a pose to enjoy the sensation of one's own spontaneous gestures, Wilde was indeed the worst of pretenders. But the stupid gravity of many generals, judges and archbishops is not more natural to them than his exquisite insolence was to him.
Below the wit and provocative persiflage of "Intentions" there is a deep and true conception of the nature of art—a conception which might well serve as the "philosophy" of much of the most interesting and arresting of modern work.
Wilde's extraordinary charm largely depends upon something invincibly boyish and youthful in him. His personality, as he himself says, has become almost symbolic—symbolic, that is, of a certain shameless and beautiful defiance of the world, expressed in an unconquerable insolence worthy of the very spirit of hard, brave, flagrant youth.
"The Importance of Being Earnest" is perhaps the gayest, least responsible, and most adorably witty of all English comedies; just as "Salome" is the most richly colored and smoulderingly sensual of all modern tragedies. One actually touches with one's fingers the feasting-cups of the Tetrarch; and the passion of the daughter of Herodias hangs round one like an exotic perfume.
In "De Profundis" we sound the sea-floor of a quite open secret; the secret namely of the invincible attraction of a certain type of artist and sensualist towards the "white Christ" who came forth from the tomb where he had been laid, with precious ointments about him, by the Arimathaean.
In "The Soul of Man" another symbolic reversion displays itself—that reversion namely of the soul of the true artist towards the revolutionary organization which, along with insensitiveness and brutality, proposes to abolish ugliness also.
The name of Oscar Wilde thus becomes a name "to conjure with" and a fantastic beacon-fire to which those "oppressed and humiliated" may repair and take new heart.
90. RUDYARD KIPLING. THE JUNGLE BOOK.
Whatever one may feel about Mr. Kipling's other work, about his rampagious imperialism, his self-conscious swashbucklerism, his pipe-clay and his journalism, his moralistic breeziness and his patronage of the "white man's burden," one cannot help admitting that the Jungle-Book is one of the immortal children's tales of the world.
In spite of the somewhat priggish introduction, even here, of what might be called his Anglo-Saxon propaganda, the Jungle-Book carries one further, it almost seems, and more convincingly, into the very heart and inwards of beast-life and wood-magic, than any other work ever written. The figures of these animals are quite Biblical in their emphatic picturesqueness, and never has the romance of these spotted and striped aboriginals, in their primordial struggles for food and water, been more thrillingly conveyed. Every scene, every situation, brands itself upon the memory as perhaps nothing else in literature does except the stories in the Old Testament. The best of all children's books—"Grimm's Fairy Tales" itself—takes no deeper hold upon the youthful mind. Mr. Kipling's genius which in his other work is constantly "dropping bricks" as the expressive phrase has it, and running amuck through strenuous banalities, rises in the Jungle-Book to heights of poetic and imaginative suggestion which will give him an undying position among the great writers of our race.
91. CHARLES L. DODGSON. ALICE IN WONDERLAND. The edition with the original illustrations.
It would be ridiculous to compile a list of a hundred best books and leave out this one. Lack of space alone prevents us from including "Through the Looking Glass" too.
"Alice" is after all as much of a classic now and by the same right, the right of a universal appeal, to every type of child, as Mother Goose of the Nursery Rhymes. She had only to appear—this slender-legged, straight-haired, Early-Victorian little prude, to enter at once the inmost arcana of the temple of art. The book is a singular evidence of what the power of a desperate devotion can do—a devotion like this of Mr. Dodgson to all little girls—when a certain whimsical genius belongs to the possessed by it.
The creator of Alice has really done nothing but permit his absorbing worship of many demure little maids to focus and concentrate itself into an almost incredible transformation of what was the intrinsic nature of the writer into what was the intrinsic nature of the "written-about."
The author of this book has indeed, so to speak, eluded the limitations of his own skin, and by the magic of his love for little girls has passed—carrying his grown-up cleverness with him—actually into the little girl's inmost consciousness. The book might be quite as witty as it is and quite as amusing but it would not carry for us that peculiar "perfume in the mention," that provocative enchantment, if it were not much more—Oh, so much more—than merely amusing. The thousand and one reactions, impressions, intimations, of a little girl's consciousness, are reproduced here with a faithfulness that is absolutely startling. What really makes the transformation complete is the absence in "Alice" of that half-comic sententious priggishness which, as soon as we have ceased to be children, we find so curiously irritating in Kingsley's "Water Babies."
92. JOHN GALSWORTHY. THE COUNTRY HOUSE. THE MAN OF PROPERTY. FRATERNITY.
John Galsworthy is almost alone among modern writers in the possession of a genius, which in the most exact sense of that admirable word, can only be described as the genius of a gentleman. It is a style singularly sensitive, a little vibrant perhaps sometimes, and so tense as to become attenuated, but of a most rare and wistful beauty. His humor which is his weakest point is a thing of almost feminine perceptions but quaintly pliable, as the sense of humor in women often is, to an odd strain of peevish extravagance.
The chivalrous nobility of Mr. Galsworthy's habitual mood is at once the cause of certain fragilities and betrayals in the mass and weight of his art and the cause of the indignant pity which evokes some of his finest touches.
It seems to irritate his nerves almost to frenzy to contemplate the shackles and fetters with which, whether in the domestic or social or legal world, the free spirits of men and women are bound down and imprisoned.
The touching figure of Mrs. Pendyce in the "Country House"—the tragic figure of Irene Soames Forsyte in the "Man of Property"—the pitiful figure of the little Model in "Fraternity"—have all something of the same quality.
95. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM. OF HUMAN BONDAGE.
In this remarkable book Mr. W. Somerset Maugham surpasses by a long distance the average novels of recent appearance. The portion of the book which deals with Paris, especially with that mad poet there, who expounds the philosophy of the "Pattern," is as suggestive a piece of literature as any we have seen for half a dozen years.
The passage towards the end of the book on the subject of the genius of El Greco is also profoundly interesting; and the sentences which comment so gravely and beautifully upon the cry of the Christ, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do," have a rare and most moving power.
96. GILBERT CANNAN. ROUND THE CORNER.
"Round the Corner" is perhaps Mr. Cannan's best book but "Young
Earnest" and "Old Mole" are also curious and interesting volumes.
Mr. Cannan is as typical a modern writer as could be found anywhere. And yet modernity is not his only charm. He has genuine psychological insight and though this insight comes in flashes and is not continuous it often gives an original twist to his characters which helps to make them strangely convincing and appealing. "Round the Corner" is a genuine masterpiece. It is the history of the most charming and touching clergyman described in all English fiction since the Vicar of Wakefield; and the massive, solid manner in which the story is constructed, the vigor and reality of the interplay of the various members of Francis' family, the admirable portrait of the mother, the grand and solemn close of the book, make it one of the most powerful works of fiction England has produced during the last decade.
Now and again—and what praise could go further?—there are little touches of clear-cut realism, of that kind which has a mystical background, which actually suggest some of the lighter and more idyllic work of Goethe himself. The book has genuine wisdom in it, of a sort superior to any philosophical system, and one feels at the close the tonic and soothing effect of a powerful moral influence, sweetening and refining one's general reaction towards life.
97. VINCENT O'SULLIVAN. THE GOOD GIRL. Published by Dutton & Co.
This admirable work of art is not known as well as it deserves either in England or America. It is a work of genius in every sense of that word, and it produces on the mind that curious sense of completeness and finality which only such works produce.
Mr. L.U. Wilkinson—himself a writer of powerful achievement—says of "The Good Girl": "It does what I have always desired should be done; it reduces 'atmosphere' and 'nature' to their proper subordinate place. It wastes no energy. It focuses one's intellect and one's emotion. It creates characters who resemble none others in fiction. It is imaginative realism of the highest level of excellence."
The complex figure of Vendred, the hero of the story, the evasive provocative Mona Lisa-like portrait of Mrs. Dover, the extraordinary and stimulating art with which her husband is described, the agitating and tragic appeal made to us by Vendred's child-wife, the unfortunate Louise—all these together make up one of the most absorbing and unforgettable impressions we have received for many years.
Of Mr. and Mrs. Dover in their relation to one another the following passage reverberates through one's mind:—"They would sit opposite one another silently, criticising with a drastic pitiless criticism. This in itself showed where they had arrived; for faith has to be shaken before there is room for criticism, and if love survives the criticism of lovers, it is altogether different from the love they began with. Lovers can be almost anything they choose to each other and still be in love, but they cannot be critical. That is blighting."
Perhaps the most tragic thing in the book is the letter written by Louise to Vendred when the luckless child discovers her husband's intrigue with her mother:—"I came to you in the middle of the night last night because I was afraid of the wind. The fire was burning and I saw. I am gone, you will never see me again."
The last scenes of the unfortunate girl's life—indirectly described by the ruffian who got possession of her in Paris—produce on the mind that sickening sense of the wanton stupidity of the Universe which fills one with hopeless pity.
The author of this book must have a noble and formidable soul.
98. OLIVER ONIONS. THE STORY OF LOUIE.
"The Story of Louie" is the last and finest volume of an astonishing trilogy—the first two volumes of which are named respectively "In Accordance with the Evidence" and "The Debit Account."
The mere fact that in the midst of our contemptible hatred of "long books" this excellent trilogy should have appeared, is an indication of the daring and originality of Mr. Oliver Onions.
Mr. Onions is one of the few modern writers—along with Hardy, Conrad and James—who is entirely untouched by political or ethical propagandism. His trilogy is a genuinely creative work of a high and exclusive order. The manner in which, to quote Mr. L.U. Wilkinson again—"the whole prospect is, as it were, strained through the character of one or other of the leading persons is in itself a proof of this writer's fine artistic instinct." The way in which all the leading persons in the book stand out in clear relief and indelibly print themselves on the mind is evidence of the value of this method. And what masterly irony in the contrast between "Evie" for instance as Jeffries sees her and "Evie" as she is seen by her rival Louie!
Nowhere in literature, except in Dostoievsky, has the ferocious struggle of two women over a man been so savagely and truly portrayed as in the great scene in "Louie" between that young woman and Evie when the latter visits her in her rooms.
Oliver Onions' humor has that large and vigorous expansiveness, touched with something almost sardonic, which we associate with some of the very greatest writers. There is always present in his work a certain free sweep of imagination which deals masterfully and suggestively with all manner of sordid material.
99. ARNOLD BENNETT. CLAYHANGER.
"Clayhanger" with its sequels, "Hilda Lessways" and "These Twain," makes up an imposing and convincing trilogy of middle-class life in the English Pottery Towns. To these books should be added "Old Wives' Tale," "Anna of the Five Towns" and all the others among this writer's works which deal with these Pottery places he knows so superbly well.
Outside the Five Towns Mr. Bennett loses something of the power of his touch. He is an interesting example of a writer with a definite "milieu" out of whose happy security he is always ill-advised to stray.
But within his own region he is a powerful master. No one in modern English fiction has treated so creatively and illuminatingly the least interesting and least romantic strata of human society which is perhaps to be found in the whole world.
And yet he endows this paralyzing bourgeoisie with astonishing life. One turns back from much more exciting literature to these ignorant, conceited, restricted and undistinguished people.
One turns back to them because Mr. Bennett shows one the tragic humanity, eternally and mysteriously fascinating, to be found beneath these vulgar and unlovely exteriors. Nor when it comes to the problem of sex itself is this writer less of a master. Never has the undying conflict, the world-old struggle, between those who, in the Catullian phrase, "love and hate" at the same time, been more convincingly brought into the light than in the relations between these uninteresting but strangely appealing people.
Arnold Bennett's knowledge of the Five Towns gives to his work a background of significant congruity whose interaction upon the characters of his plots has the same kind of weight and portentousness as the interaction of Nature in the books of Mr. Hardy.
Such a background may be in itself materialistic and sordid, but in the imaginative reaction it produces upon the characters it has the genuine poetic quality.
100. OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE.
This is by far the best anthology of English poetry, its only rival being the first series of Palgrave's Golden Treasury. Those interested in the work of more recent poets and in the latest poetic "movements" in England and America would be wise to turn to Putnam's "Georgian Poetry"—two series—and "The New Poetry" by Harriet Monroe, published by Macmillan. The compiler of this selection of books feels himself that the most poetical among the younger poets of our age is Walter de la Mare and of the poems which Mr. de la Mare has so far written, he finds the best to be those extraordinary and magical verses entitled "The Listeners" which seem to come nearer to giving a voice to the unutterable margin of our days than any others written within the last ten years.
The following pages contain an alphabetical list by author of the One Hundred Best Books, also the titles of other books recommended in the text by Mr. Powys. The numerals following the titles of the books refer to the number given the books in this list, while the prices attached thereto are the Publisher's list prices. If sent by mail or express it is necessary to add the cost, which is usually about 10 per cent, of the price.
G. ARNOLD SHAW, PUBLISHER GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK
INDEX WITH PRICES OF RECOMMENDED EDITIONS OF
JOHN COWPER POWYS' LIST
OF
ONE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS
And Other Books Mentioned In the Text
Binding and
price
Author Title Leather Cloth
Artzibasheff …….. Sanine (52) ………………….. $1.35
Artzibasheff …….. Breaking Point ……………….. 1.40
Austen, Jane …….. *Pride and Prejudice (61) ……… $1.25 .75
Balzac, Honore de … *Lost Illusions (29) Centenary ed.. 1.35
Balzac, Honore de … *Cousin Bette (30) Centenary ed…. 1.35
Balzac, Honore de … *Old Goriot (31) Centenary ed…… 1.35
Bennett, Arnold ….. Clayhanger (99)……………….. 1.50
Bennett, Arnold ….. Hilda Lessways ……………….. 1.50
Bennett, Arnold ….. These Twain ………………….. 1.50
Bennett, Arnold ….. Old Wives' Tale ………………. 1.50
Bennett, Arnold ….. Anna of the Five Towns ………… 1.20
Brontë, Emily ……. Wüthering Heights (62) ………… 1.75
Bourget, Paul ……. Le Disciple (38)………………. .75
Browne, Sir Thos….. *Religio Medici and Urn Burial
(11) in Scott Library ……….. .40
Browne, Sir Thos….. *Religio (Golden Treasury Series) . 1.00
Cannan, Gilbert…… Round the Corner (96) …………. 1.35
Cannan, Gilbert…… Young Earnest ………………… 1.35
Cannan, Gilbert…… Old Mole …………………….. 1.35
Catullus…………. Loeb Library Edition (5) ………. 2.00 1.50
Cervantes………… *Don Quixote (27) trans. W.J.
Jarvis ……………………… 2.00
Carroll, Lewis……. Alice in Wonderland (91) ……… 1.00
Carroll, Lewis……. Thro the Looking Glass ……….. 1.00
Chesterton, G.K…… Orthodoxy (86) ………………. 1.50
Conrad, Joseph……. Chance (75) …………………. 1.50
Conrad, Joseph……. Lord Jim (76) ……………….. 1.50
Conrad, Joseph……. Victory (77) ………………… 1.50
Conrad, Joseph …… Youth (78) ………………….. 1.50
Conrad, Joseph …… Almayer's Folly (79) …………. 1.35
Dante …………… Divine Comedy (6) …………….
Temple Classics, 3 vols. ……… 1.35
D'Annunzio, G. …… The Flame of Life (40) ……….. 1.50
D'Annunzio, G. …… The Triumph of Death (41) …….. 1.50
de la Mare, Walter… The Listeners ……………….. 1.20
Dickens, Charles….. *Great Expectations (60),
Oxford Edition …………….. .75
Dickens, Charles….. *Great Expectations, Oxford
Red Venetian ………………. 1.25
Dickens, Charles….. *Great Expectations, India paper,
Lambskin ………………….. 1.75
Dostoievsky, F……. *Crime and Punishment, trans. C.
Garnett (42) ………………. 1.50
Dostoievsky, F……. *The Idiot (43), C. Garnett …… 1.50
Dostoievsky, F……. The Brothers Karamazov (44) C.
Garnett …………………… 1.50
Dostoievsky, F……. The Insulted and Injured (45) C.
Garnett …………………… 1.50
Dostoievsky, F……. The Possessed (46) C. Garnett …. 1.50
Dreiser, Theodore…. The Titan (26) ………………. 1.40
Emerson, R.W……… Essays (23), first and second
series in one volume. Cambridge
Classics Edition …………… .90
Euripides ……….. The Bacchae (3), trans, by Gilbert
Murray ……………………. .65
France, Anatole ….. The Elm Tree on the Mall (34) …. 1.75
France, Anatole ….. The Opinions of Jerome
Coignard (35) ……………… 1.75
France, Anatole ….. My Friend's Book (36) ………… 1.75
Galsworthy, John….. The Country House (92) ……….. 1.35
Galsworthy, John….. The Man of Property (93) ……… 1.35
Galsworthy, John….. Fraternity (94) ……………… 1.35
Georgian Poetry…… 1911/1912 …………………… 1.50
Georgian Poetry…… 1913/1914 …………………… 1.50
Goethe…………… *Faust (12) trans. by Bayard Taylor 1.25
Goethe…………… *Wilhelm Meister (13) trans. by
Carlyle …………………… 1.25
Goethe…………… Goethe's Conversations with
Eckerman (14) ……………… 1.25
Gourmont, Remy de…. A Night in the Luxembourg (37) … 1.50
Gorki, Maxim……… Foma Gordyeeff (50) … 1.00
Hardy, Thomas ……. Tess of the D'Urbevilles (70) …. 1.50
Hardy, Thomas…….. The Return of the Native (71) …. 1.50
Hardy, Thomas…….. The Mayor of Casterbridge (72)…. 1.50
Hardy, Thomas…….. Far from the Madding Crowd (73) .. 1.50
Hardy, Thomas…….. Wessex Poems (74) ……………. 1.85
Hardy, Thomas…….. Poems of Past and Present …….. 1.60
Hardy, Thomas…….. Satires of Circumstances ……… 1.50
Hauptmann………… The Fool in Christ, (20) ……… 1.50
Heine …………… Prose works and "Confessions"
(18), Scott Library ………… .40
Heine …………… Life of—Great Writers Series …. .40
Horace…………… *Odes (4) prose translation …… 1.25
Hugo, Victor …….. *The Toilers of the Sea (28) ….. 1.00
Homer …………… *The Odyssey, (2) Butcher and
Lang ………………………. .80
Ibsen……………. *The Wild Duck (21) ………….. 1.00
James, Henry …….. The Ambassadors (64) …………. 2.00
James, Henry …….. The Tragic Muse (65) 2 vols. each. 1.25
James, Henry …….. The Soft Side (66) …………… 1.50
James, Henry …….. The Better Sort (67) …………. 1.35
James, Henry …….. The Wings of a Dove (68) 2 vols. . 2.25
James, Henry …….. The Golden Bowl (69) 2 vols. ….. 2.25
Kipling, Rudyard….. The Jungle Book (90) …………. 1.50
Lamb, Charles ……. *Essays of Elia (55) Eversley Ed. 1.50
Masters, Edgar Lee… Spoon River Anthology (25) ……. 1.50 1.25
Maugham, W. Somerset. Of Human Bondage (95) ………… 1.50
Maupassant, Guy de .. Madame Tellier's Establishment
(32) paper ………………… .40
Meredith, George …. Harry Richmond (65) Pocket ed. … 1.00
Milton ……(10) Eversley Edition (or*), 3 vols. set 4.50
Monroe, Harriet ….. The New Poetry ………………. 1.50
Nietzsche, F……… Zarathustra (15) …………….. 2.00
Nietzsche, F……… The Joyful Wisdom (16) ……….. 1.60
Nietzsche, F……… Ecce Homo (17) ………………. 2.00
Nietzsche, F……… Commentary by Lichtenberger …… 1.50
Nietzsche, F……… Life of by Daniel Halevy, trans. . 1.25
Onions, Oliver …… The Story of Louie (98) ………. 1.25
Onions, Oliver …… In Accordance with the Evidence .. 1.25
Onions, Oliver …… The Debit Account ……………. 1.25
O'Sullivan, Vincent.. The Good Girl (97) …………… 1.35
Oxford Book of English Verse (100), crown 8 vo. ……. 2.00
Oxford Book of English Verse, India Paper Edition ….. 2.75
Palgrave ………… Golden Treasury, First Series* … 1.00
Pater, Walter ……. Marius the Epicurean (80), 2 vols. 4.00
Pater, Walter ……. Studies in the Renaissance (81) .. 2.00
Pater, Walter ……. Imaginary Portraits (82) ……… 2.00
Pater, Walter ……. Plato and Platonism (83) ……… 2.00
Pater, Walter ……. Gaston de Latour (84) ………… 2.00
Rabelais ………… (7) Edition with Doré Illustrations
Rare Selection in French Classics
for English Readers' Series …. 1.25
Rolland, Romain ….. Jean Christophe (39)
(trans. G. Cannan), 3 vols. …. 4.50
Scott, Sir Walter … *Guy Mannering (56), Dryburgh
Edition …………………… 1.25
Scott, Sir Walter … *Bride of Lammermoor (57) …….. 1.25
Scott, Sir Walter … *Heart of Midlothian (58) …….. 1.25
Shakespeare ……… Troilus and Cressida (9), Temple . .55 .35
Shakespeare ……… Measure for Measure, Temple …… .55 .35
Shakespeare ……… Timon of Athens, Temple Edition .. .55 .35
Shaw, George Bernard Man and Superman (85) ………… 1.25
Stendhal ………… The Red and the Black (33) ……. 1.75
Sterne, Laurence …. *Tristram Shandy (53)
Lib. of Eng. Classics,
2 vols. each ………………. 1.50
Strindberg, August .. The Confessions of a Fool (22) … 1.35
Sudermann ……….. Song of Songs (19) …………… 1.40
Swift, Jonathan ….. *Tale of a Tub (54), Bohn Lib. … 1.25
Thackeray, W.M. ….. *Henry Esmond (59), Cranford
Series ……………………. 2.00
Thackeray, W.M. ….. *Henry Esmond, Oxford Edition …. .75
Thackeray, W.M. ….. *Henry Esmond, India Paper ed. … 1.75
Turgeniev ……….. *Virgin Soil, trans. Constance
Garnett, 2 vols. each (47) ….. 1.00
Turgeniev ……….. Sportsman's Sketches, trans.
Constance Garnett,
2 vols. each (48) ………….. 1.00
Turgeniev ……….. *Lisa, trans. Constance
Garnett, (49) ……………… 1.00
Tschekoff ……….. The Sea Gull (51) ……………. 1.50
Voltaire ………… Candide (8) in Morley's Universal
Library …………………… .35
Whitman, Walt ……. *Leaves of Grass (24) ………… 1.25
Wilde, Oscar …….. Intentions (87) Ravenna Edition .. 1.25
Wilde, Oscar …….. The Importance of Being
Earnest (88) ………………. 1.25
Wilde, Oscar …….. De Profundis (89) ……………. 1.25
An asterisk (*) before the title of a book indicates that it may be obtained in Everyman's Library, as well as the edition named, price 40 cts, in cloth, and 80 cts. in leather.
THE END
REMINISCENT OF DOSTOIEVSKY
WOOD AND STONE
A ROMANCE
By JOHN COWPER POWYS
12mo, 722 pages, $1.50 net
This is an epoch marking novel by an author "who is dramatic as is no other now writing."—Oakland Enquirer.
In this startling and original romance, the author turns aside from the track of his contemporaries and reverts to models drawn from races which have bolder and less conventional views of literature than the Anglo-Saxon race. Following the lead of the Great Russian Dostoievsky, he proceeds boldly to lay bare the secret passions, the unacknowledged motives and impulses, which lurk below the placid-seeming surface of ordinary human nature.
It has been reviewed favorably by all of America's principal newspapers, as the following extracts from press notices will indicate:
BOSTON TRANSCRIPT: "His mastery of language, his knowledge of human impulses, his interpretation of the forces of nature and of the power of inanimate objects over human beings, all pronounce him a writer of no mean rank…. He can express philosophy in terms of narrative without prostituting his art; he can suggest an answer without drawing a moral; with a clearer vision he could stand among the masters in literary achievement."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: "Psychologically speaking, it is one of the most remarkable pieces of fiction ever written…. I do not hesitate to say that a new novelist of power has appeared upon the scene."
EVENING SUN, New York: "Mr. Powys, master essayist, comes forward with a first novel which is brilliant in style, absorbing in plot, deep and thoughtful in its purpose."
PHILADELPHIA PRESS: "It undoubtedly will set a new mark in literature of the contemporary period…. Mr. Powys' style is the style of Thomas Hardy."
PHILADELPHIA RECORD: "Every page is a joy, every chapter a fresh proof of Powys' genius."
N.Y. EVENING POST: "The best novel one reviewer has read in a good while."
NEW YORK TIMES: "Mr. Powys is evidently a keen observer of life and responsive to all its phases."
N.Y. TRIBUNE: "A good story well told."
N.Y. HERALD: "Here is a novel worth reading."
THE NATION: "A book of distinctive flavor."
REVIEW OF REVIEWS: "An exceptional novel … a brilliant intellectual piece of work."
PHILADELPHIA NORTH AMERICAN: "A notable achievement in fictitious literature."
SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN: "This is a book which will have more than the ephemeral existence of the average novel."
NEW HAVEN COURIER JOURNAL: "One of the most notable and important novels that has appeared in the last twelve months."
HARTFORD COURANT: "The book is very interesting, provokingly interesting."
DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE, ROCHESTER: "Among the few works of fiction that stand out in the very forefront of this season's production."
G. ARNOLD SHAW, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY LECTURERS ASSOCIATION
GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK
SHAW'S FALL FICTION
RODMOOR, A ROMANCE BY JOHN COWPER POWYS.
12mo. About 400 pages. $1.50 net
The New York Evening Post said of Mr. Powys' first novel "Wood and Stone" that it was "one of the best novels of the twelvemonth" while the Boston Transcript said that "with a clearer vision he could stand among the masters in literary achievement." The Chicago Tribune said of the same work, "Psychologically speaking, it is one of the most remarkable pieces of fiction ever written." The announcement of a second novel by the same brilliant author is therefore one of extraordinary interest.
In this new novel, Mr. Powys, while unhesitatingly using to his purpose those new fields of psychological interest opened up for us by recent Russian writers, reverts, in the general style and content of his story, to that more idealistic, more simple mood, which we associate with such great romanticists as Emily Brontë and Victor Hugo.
QUAKER-BORN, A ROMANCE OF THE GREAT WAR, BY IAN CAMPBELL HANNAH.
12mo. About 320 pages. $1.35 net
While this is Dr. Hannah's first novel, it is his eighth published work; he thus brings to bear the skill of the literary craftsman upon his dramatic theme of the Quakers' conscientious objections to war. To fight or not to fight is the problem that confronted Edward Alexander when he witnessed the bombardment of Scarborough; he decided as an Englishman, not as a Quaker—but, the next day a telegram came summoning him to the death-bed of his mother, who demanded as her dying wish that he should not abandon the principles of the Friends. He had the strength to reverse his decision but neither his fiancée nor his best Cambridge friend could understand. How he nearly lost the former while saving the life of the latter on the battle field in Flanders is the basis of an absorbing plot which holds the interest from beginning to end of this thrilling story of young love. An admirable book recommended especially to those who detest alike the mawkish sentiment of the "best-seller" and the revolting realistic novels of our day.
THE CHILD OF THE MOAT, A STORY OF 1550, BY I.B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN.
12mo. About 320 pages. $1.25 net
This is a book for girls of from 13 to 16 written for a child rescued from the Lusitania. Many complain that girls' books are too tame and prefer those written for boys. Mr. Holborn therefore promised to write a girls' book with as much adventure as Stevenson's "Treasure Island." He has succeeded and the hair-breadth escapes of the heroine should satisfy the most exacting. The scene is laid in the stirring times of the Reformation and those who know the author as an archaeological lecturer will recognize his bent in several picturesque touches, such as the striking dressing scene before the heroine's birthday-party. The book is a remarkable contribution to children's literature and suggests a raising of the standard if more were written by men of learning and scholarship who are true child-lovers. After all was not "Alice in Wonderland" written by an erudite Oxford don and everyone who has read the present author's volume of poems "Children of Fancy" will know him as a lover of children.
G. ARNOLD SHAW, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY LECTURERS ASSOCIATION
GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK
Recommended by the A.L.A. Booklist
Adopted for required reading by the Pittsburgh
Teachers Reading Circle
VISIONS AND REVISIONS
A BOOK OF LITERARY DEVOTIONS
By JOHN COWPER POWYS
8vo, 298 pp. Half White Cloth with Blue Fabriano Paper Sides, $2.00 net
This volume of essays on Great Writers by the well-known lecturer was the first of a series of three books with the same purpose as the author's brilliant lectures; namely, to enable one to discriminate between the great and the mediocre in ancient and modern literature: the other two books being "One Hundred Best Books" and "Suspended Judgments."
Within a year of its publication, four editions of "Visions and Revisions" were printed—an extraordinary record considering that it was only the second book issued by a new publisher. The value of the book to the student and its interest for the general reader are guaranteed by the international fame of the author as an interpreter of great literature and by the enthusiastic reviews it received from the American Press.
REVIEW OF REVIEWS, New York: "Seventeen essays … remarkable for the omission of all that is tedious and cumbersome in literary appreciations, such as pedantry, muckraking, theorizing, and, in particular, constructive criticism."
BOOK NEWS MONTHLY, Philadelphia: "Not one line in the entire book that is not tense with thought and feeling. With all readers who crave mental stimulation … 'Visions and Revisions' is sure of a great and enthusiastic appreciation."
THE NATION AND THE EVENING POST, New York: "Their imagery is bright, clear and frequently picturesque. The rhythm falls with a pleasing cadence on the ear."
BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE: "A volume of singularly acute and readable literary criticism."
CHICAGO HERALD: "An essayist at once scholarly, human and charming is John Cowper Powys…. Almost every page carries some arresting thought, quaintly appealing phrase, or picture spelling passage."
REEDY'S MIRROR, St. Louis: "Powys keeps you wide awake in the reading because he's thinking and writing from the standpoint of life, not of theory or system. Powys has a system but it is hardly a system. It is a sort of surrender to the revelation each writer has to make."
KANSAS CITY STAR: "John Cowper Powys' essays are wonderfully illuminating…. Mr. Powys writes in at least a semblance of the Grand Style."
"Visions and Revisions" contains the following essays:—
Rabelais Dickens Thomas Hardy
Dante Goethe Walter Pater
Shakespeare Matthew Arnold Dostoievsky
El Greco Shelley Edgar Allan Poe
Milton Keats Walt Whitman
Charles Lamb Nietzsche Conclusion
G. ARNOLD SHAW, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY LECTURERS ASSOCIATION
GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK
SUSPENDED JUDGMENTS
ESSAYS ON BOOKS AND SENSATIONS BY JOHN COWPER POWYS
8vo. about 400 pages. Half cloth with blue Fabriano paper sides……………………………………..$2.00 net
The Book News Monthly said of "Visions and Revisions":
"Not one line in the entire book that is not tense with thought and feeling."
The author of "Visions and Revisions" says of this new book of essays:
"In 'Suspended Judgments' I have sought to express with more deliberation and in a less spasmodic manner than in 'Visions,' the various after-thoughts and reactions both intellectual and sensational which have been produced in me, in recent years, by the re-reading of my favorite writers. I have tried to capture what might be called the 'psychic residuum' of earlier fleeting impressions and I have tried to turn this emotional aftermath into a permanent contribution—at any rate for those of similar temperament—to the psychology of literary appreciation.
"To the purely critical essays in this volume I have added a certain number of others dealing with what, in popular parlance, are called 'general topics,' but what in reality are always—in the most extreme sense of that word—personal to the mind reacting from them. I have called the book 'Suspended Judgments' because while one lives, one grows, and while one grows, one waits and expects."
SUSPENDED JUDGMENTS CONTAINS THESE ESSAYS:
THE ART OF DISCRIMINATION IN LITERATURE
MONTAIGNE EMILY BRONTË PASCAL JOSEPH CONRAD VOLTAIRE HENRY JAMES ROUSSEAU OSCAR WILDE BALZAC AUBREY BEARDSLEY VICTOR HUGO DE MAUPASSANT FRIENDS ANATOLE FRANCE RELIGION PAUL VERLAINE LOVE REMY DE GOURMANT CITIES WILLIAM BLAKE MORALITY BYRON EDUCATION
G. ARNOLD SHAW, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY LECTURERS ASSOCIATION
GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK
"Rhymes or Real Poems?"—Boston Globe
WOLF'S—BANE
RHYMES BY JOHN COWPER POWYS
8vo, 120 pages, $1.25 net
In these remarkable poems Mr. Powys strikes a new and startlingly unfamiliar note; their interest lies in the fact that they are the unaffected outcries and protests of a soul in exile, and their originality is to be found in that they sweep aside all facile and commonplace consolations and give expression to the natural and incurable sadness of the heart of man.
NEW YORK EVENING POST says: "As regards what Mr. Powys modestly calls his 'rhymes,' we hesitate to say how many years it is necessary to go back in order to find their equals in sheer poetic originality."
BOOK NEWS MONTHLY says: "Such poems as those are worthy of a permanent existence in literature."
KANSAS CITY STAR says: "It is unmistakably verse of lasting quality."
THE WAR AND CULTURE
An Answer to Professor Musterberg
By JOHN COWPER POWYS
12mo, 113 pages, 60 cents
Mr. Powys says of this book that he has sought to correct that plausible and superficial view of the Russian people as "the half-civilised legions to whom we have taught killing by machinery"—a view to which even so independent a thinker as George Bernard Shaw appears to have fallen a victim.
The Nation says:—"It is more weighty than many of the more pretentious treatises on the subject."
THE SOLILOQUY OF A HERMIT
By THEODORE FRANCIS POWYS
12mo, 144 pages, $1.00
A profoundly original interpretation of life by the great lecturer's hermit brother of which the Dial, Chicago says: "Truly a satirist and humorist of a different kidney from the ordinary sort is this companionable hermit. There is many a chuckle in his little book."
G. ARNOLD SHAW, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY LECTURERS ASSOCIATION
GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK
BOOKS BY I.B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN
CHILDREN OF FANCY
Second Edition, 256 pages, $2.00 net
This volume has a special claim to attention as the poet was invited to read these poems at Oxford University at the 1915 Summer Meeting. The Oxford Chronicle in a long account "of one of the greatest pleasures provided for the Meeting," remarked that "the ideal is perfectly attained when the poet can recite his own poems with the artistry with which Mr. Holborn introduced to his audience his charming 'Children of Fancy.'"
Mr. Holborn swam with part of the MSS. from the Lusitania, and the Edinburgh Evening News says that "he has commemorated the tragedy in lines of sublime pathos."
AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS says: "Mr. Holborn's poetry is delicate, musical, rhapsodic; often shaped to enfold classical themes, always of proportioned comeliness, filled with a vague haunting of indefinable beauty that can never be embraced in words. It is a book of poetry for poets; one can hardly say more."
Adopted for Required Reading by the Pittsburgh Teachers Reading Circle
THE NEED FOR ART IN LIFE
Cloth, 116 pp., 75 cents net
The object of Mr. Holborn's little book is to show that the peculiar evil of the present day is a lack of the proper love and appreciation of Art and Beauty. Our social and political problems which we attempt to tackle on scientific and moral lines can never be righted in that way, as we have not made a scientifically correct diagnosis of the disease.
He makes a careful analytical survey of the three great epochs in our past civilization and clearly demonstrates that wherever one of the fundamentals of man's existence is wanting the man as a whole must fail.
It makes no difference whether the lack be on the intellectual, artistic or moral side—the result is equally disastrous to the complete man.
THE BOSTON TRANSCRIPT says: "This is one of the greatest little books of the age. If it is not epoch-making, it should be. It treats in charming style and convincing manner a theme of vital and universal interest. The thoughtful man who reads it will feel that a new classic has been added to the world's literature."
ARCHITECTURES OF EUROPEAN RELIGIONS
Blue Buckram, Gold stamping, 264 pp., $2.00 net
G. ARNOLD SHAW, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY LECTURERS ASSOCIATION
GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK
Recommended by the A.L.A. Booklist
Specially suitable for Schools and Colleges
ARMS AND THE MAP
A STUDY IN NATIONALITIES AND FRONTIERS
By IAN CAMPBELL HANNAH, M.A., D.C.L.
12mo, 256 pages, $1.23 net
This work, which has had a large sale in England, will be invaluable when the terms of peace begin to be seriously discussed. Every European people is reviewed and the evolution of the different nationalities is carefully explained. Particular reference is made to the so-called "Irredentist" lands, whose people want to be under a different flag from that under which they live.
The colonizing methods of all the nations are dealt with, and especially the place in the sun that Germany hasn't got.
NEW YORK TIMES says: "Such a volume as this will undoubtedly be of value in presenting … facts of great importance in a brief and interesting fashion."
BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE says: "It is hard to find a man who presents his arguments so broad-mindedly as Dr. Hannah. His spirit is that of a catholic scholar striving earnestly to find the truth and present it sympathetically."
PHILADELPHIA NORTH AMERICAN says: "It is in no sense history, but rather a preparatory effort to mark broadly the outlines of any future peace settlement that would have even a fighting chance of permanency. Only in perusing a critical study of this character can the vast problems of post-bellum imminence be fully apprehended."
PHILADELPHIA PRESS says: "His work is immensely readable and particularly interesting at this time and will throw much fresh light on the situation."