THE DAYSPRING--A Romance. By WILLIAM BARRY, D.D., Author of ‘The
Wizard’s Knot,’ etc., etc.
This is the lite story of an eager, earnest young soul, rising at
length above the illusion of the senses to the clear heights of faith.
Noble aims, misconstrued in the mirage of modern Paris, under the charm
of a deluding spirituality, bring us to the moment of choice between
two paths, one that of so-called Free Love, the other that of supreme
self-sacrifice. The dreamy mysticism, the sparkling humour, the sudden
brilliances, the delicate fancies which characterise the work of the
author of ‘The New Antigone’ are to be found in this newest and perhaps
most fascinating of Dr. Barry’s books. A background of adventure is set
by the last days of the Second Empire and the Commune of 1871.
A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE--Played in Homburg. By Mrs AUBREY RICHARDSON.
(First Novel Library).
A dramatic episode of life in Homburg, at the height of the English
season. The characters represent types of men and women actually to be
met with in the high social and political world of to-day. A Society
Beauty and a Sister of an Anglican Community personify the red Rose of
Love, Pride and Gaiety, and the pale Lily of Purity, Aspiration and
Repression. In the heart of the Rose, a lily bud unfolds, and in the
calyx of the Lily, a rose blossoms. The incidents of the story succeed
each other swiftly, reaching a strong _dénoûement_, and working out to
a satisfying termination.
THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA: A Satire for Idle People. By W. R. H.
TROWBRIDGE, Author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth.’
Lady Patricia is an Englishwoman of a noble but impoverished family,
whose girlhood has been spent on the Continent. Left an orphan she
comes to England with the independent intention of seeking her own
living. Sometimes under her own, sometimes under an assumed name,
she takes various situations in England and France, and is brought
in contact with many different sets of society both in the upper and
the middle classes. In this volume she relates her experiences, and
comments upon them with caustic wit. The plan of the work affords
the author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth’ an excellent
opportunity of satirising the aristocracy and the _bourgeois
gentilshommes_ of England and France, and readers of the earlier volume
will be prepared for a book full of piquancy and daring.
THAT FAST MISS BLOUNT. A Novel. By ROY HORNIMAN, Author of ‘The Living
Buddha,’ ‘The Sin of Atlantis,’ etc.
There is nothing easier for a girl who has been born in a garrison town
of hard-up Service parents than to drift, especially if, as in the case
of Philippa, she has been disappointed in her first romance and is
left a little soured and hardened. It is so easy to enjoy the tawdry
amusements that come her way; and if, like Philippa, she is beautiful,
flirtation follows flirtation, men come and go, till it becomes the
habit to talk of her as ‘that fast Miss Blount.’ She is not the sort of
girl as a rule who gets married. There is something in the atmosphere
about her which makes marrying men fight shy of her. Philippa, however,
is saved from social shipwreck by marrying in such a way as to rouse
the envy of all those who have been her traducers. The background of
the story is concerned with the family life of Captain and Mrs Blount’s
household. There are also some exciting chapters dealing with the South
African war.
ANGLO-AMERICANS. By LUCAS CLEEVE.
The main theme of this story is the fundamental antagonism existing
between two characters--an American girl educated in ideas of freedom
and independence, and of the subservience of man to woman, and her
husband, an English Lord, who expects his wife to regard his career
and interests as her own, and to devote herself to them even to the
obliteration of herself. The girl’s father is a millionaire, and the
story tells incidentally of the illicit means by which his pile was
made.
THROUGH SORROW’S GATES. A Tale of the Wintry Heath. By HALLIWELL
SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of Withens,’ etc.
The scene is laid in Halliwell Sutcliffe’s favourite country, the moors
of the West Riding, though in the present book he goes even further
into the heart of the heath, nearer to that simplicity of feeling and
passion which is the real mark of the moor-folk. His characters spring
from the moor, as it were, and grow out of it; and not least of these
characters is Hester, the impulsive, erring farm lass, who dreamed wild
dreams at Windy Farm, and saw herself supplanted by a little, well-born
woman rescued from the snow.
KITTY COSTELLO. By Mrs ALEXANDER.
This story--the last that was written by Mrs Alexander--tells the
experiences of a well-born, beautiful Irish girl suddenly plunged,
somewhere about the ‘forties,’ into commercial circles in a busy
English port. The attraction of the book consists rather in the
brightly-drawn contrast of the Irish and English temperaments, with
their widely differing views of life, than in exciting incidents,
though the reader can hardly fail to feel the fascination of the
heroine or to be interested in all that befalls her.
NYRIA. By Mrs CAMPBELL PRAED.
The author considers this the most important book she has yet written.
Its preparation has engaged her for a long time, and in it she gives
her readers the very best of herself. The scene is laid in Rome in
the first century A.D., and among the characters are many historical
figures. The period offers magnificent opportunities for the writer of
romance, and of Mrs Campbell Praed’s imaginative gifts and power of
vivid description it is, of course, needless to speak at this time of
day. The story, which is a lengthy one, will be found to be full of
dramatic situations and thrilling incidents.
COURT CARDS. By AUSTIN CLARE, Author of ‘The Carved Cartoon,’
‘Pandora’s Portion,’ ‘The Tideway,’ etc.
A romance dated in the closing years of the sixteenth century, and
placed on both sides of the border. The time, a stirring one, when
the old order changing had not yet wholly yielded place to the new,
admits of romantic incidents of every kind, from raiding, kidnapping
and gaol-breaking, to mysterious love-making and midnight murder.
The intrigues between the English and Scottish Courts form a plot
sufficiently intricate, which is here likened to a game of whist, the
court-cards chiefly used therein being Queen Elizabeth of England,
James VI of Scotland, and the celebrated Archie Armstrong, called ‘The
Knave of Hearts,’ who by a series of extraordinary adventures, rose
from the condition of a wanderer and sheep stealer on the border side
to the position of chief jester and ruling favourite at the Scottish
Court.
THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT. By FORREST REID. (First Novel Library).
This is the history of the earlier half of the life of a man of genius,
following him through boyhood and youth to maturity. It is a book in
which the form, the atmosphere, count for much. Essentially the study
of a temperament--a temperament subtle, delicate, rare--it has more in
common, perhaps, with the work of D’Annunzio than that of any English
novelist; the author’s aim, at all events, having been to describe,
from within, the gradual development of a human soul--to trace the
wanderings of a spirit as it passes from light to light in search of
that great light ‘that never was on sea or land.’
A BACHELOR IN ARCADY. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of
Withens,’ ‘Mistress Barbara Cunliffe,’ etc.
In this book Mr Sutcliffe abandons his strenuous manner of adventure,
feud, swordplay and fierce wooing, and gives us an English idyll.
The bachelor is a man of some thirty odd years, who dwells in rural
peace among his animals, birds, fields and flowers, and, assisted by
his faithful henchman, sows his seeds, mows and prunes in complacent
contempt for such as have succumbed to the delights of matrimony. And
so he fares through spring and summer, seedtime and harvest, his chief
companions the squire across the fields and his young daughter, till as
time goes on he discovers that the girl is all the world to him, and
the curtain descends on the bachelor--a bachelor no more.
THE MISCHIEF OF A GLOVE. By Mrs PHILIP CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY, Author
of ‘From behind the Arras.’
This story deals with the adventures of a man and a maid in the time
of Mary I of England. The heroine, the daughter of a wild and reckless
father, inherits his bold spirit, and by her woman’s wit and courage,
assists her lover to elude the pursuit of his enemies. She sallies
forth in man’s attire for his sake, and has many adventures, both
humorous and otherwise, before the end is attained.
HELEN ADAIR. By LOUIS BECKE.
This story, which is largely based on fact, describes the career of a
young Irish girl whose father was transported to Botany Bay for being
concerned in the publication of a ‘seditious’ newspaper. Helen Adair,
so that she may follow her father to the Antipodes, and share, or at
least alleviate, his misfortunes under the dreaded ‘Convict System,’
passes counterfeit coin in Dublin, is tried and convicted under an
assumed name, and is sent out in a transport. Her adventures in
Australia form an exciting romance.
ROSEMONDE. By BEATRICE STOTT. (First Novel Library).
This is the story of a gifted, sensitive woman, her husband who was
a genius, and the unquenchable love for each other which was their
torture and their bane.
LAURA’S LEGACY. By E. H. STRAIN, Author of ‘A Man’s Foes.’
The ‘Innocent Impostor’ of the title is a very charming girl who has
grown up in the full belief of herself and the world that she is Miss
Barclay of Eaglesfaulds; her mother dotes on her, she is seemingly
heiress to large property, even the Queen is interested in her,
how can she guess that she is in reality the daughter of a beggar
woman, and is keeping the rightful heir out of his inheritance? How
this extraordinary situation came about and the trouble and tangle
it brought into the life of a sensitive and noble-natured girl, is
narrated by E. H. Strain after the fashion which has already endeared
her to many readers.
THE BLACK SHILLING. By AMELIA E. BARR.
Critics who have read this novel in manuscript speak of it as the best
story Mrs Barr has yet written. Its central character--Cotton Mather,
preacher, scholar, philanthropist and persecutor--is one of the most
picturesque figures in American history, while the period--that of
the witchcraft scare at the opening of the eighteenth century, when
numbers of men and women suffered cruel persecution for their supposed
trafficking with the Evil One--is full of dramatic possibilities.
THE VINEYARD. By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.
In this novel Mrs Craigie turns from the glittering world of finance,
which she depicted so brilliantly in ‘Love and the Soul Hunters,’ and
gives us a story of life in an English provincial town. As in all her
books the love interest is strong, and under the ‘signoria d’Amore’ her
characters are led into situations of the deepest interest, demanding
for their treatment all the subtlety of insight which her previous
works have shown her to possess.
THE MIS-RULE OF THREE. By FLORENCE WARDEN, Author of ‘The House on the
Marsh,’ etc.
This is the story of three young men, living together in London
lodgings, of the ideals of womanhood which they have formed, and of the
singular fashion in which each falls a victim to the charms of a woman
in all respects the opposite to his ideal. The story takes the reader
from London to the most romantic region of the Channel Islands, and
is connected with a mystery which surrounds the owner of one of these
islands.
T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher,