_The Tideway_, by “_John Ayscough_” (Benziger Brothers). This collection
of stories has much of Henry Harland’s charm, with a more complete
mastery of plot. These stories are, many of them, studies in social
atmosphere, and if their substance is tenuous, Monsignor
Bickerstaffe-Drew has made the most of it.
_Johnny Pryde_, by _J. J. Bell_ (Fleming H. Revell Company). The dry
merriment of this little book is infectious, and makes it a worthy
successor to the best of Wee Macgreegor’s earlier adventures.
_The Empty House_, _John Silence_, _The Listener_, and _The Lost
Valley_, by _Algernon Blackwood_ (E. P. Dutton & Company). The present
reprint of four of Algernon Blackwood’s earlier collections of short
stories gives me the opportunity to call attention to four books for
which I care more personally than for the short stories of any other
English writer. No contemporary has continued the magic tradition of
Keats and Coleridge more successfully than Mr. Blackwood, particularly
in “The Listener” and “The Lost Valley.” These two books at least will
last longer than any other volume of short stories by an English or
American writer published this year.
_The Watcher by the Threshold_, by _John Buchan_ (George H. Doran
Company). Seven or eight years ago a remarkable book of animistic
stories by a writer then unknown to me was issued in this country. It at
once awakened my enthusiasm for the writer’s work, and I felt that an
important new figure had come into view. But “The Moon Endureth”
attracted almost no attention and has since been forgotten. Mr. Buchan
has published other pleasant books since then but the present collection
is the first to recapture something of the same beauty, and in
recommending it cordially to the public I earnestly hope that Mr.
Buchan’s publishers will find it possible to reissue “The Moon
Endureth.”
_Nights in London_, by _Thomas Burke_ (Henry Holt & Company). Strictly
speaking, this is not a volume of short stories, but to those who
greatly admired “Limehouse Nights” last year this volume will be found
to hold the same fascination of style and to make clearer the human
background out of which that book flowered.
_Gentlemen at Arms_, by “_Centurion_” (Doubleday, Page & Co.). This
volume stands out as a distinguished record from the host of personal
experiences which the war has produced. I think it quite the best of the
English collection, and a volume which the earlier Kipling might have
been proud to sign. There is a poignancy about these studies which is
relieved by a well-considered art.
_Under the Hermes_, by “_Richard Dehan_” (Dodd, Mead & Company). This
book is written solely with the worthy object of entertaining the
reader. Five or six years ago, I remember steaming down the Labrador in
a decrepit little boat called, rather magnificently, the _Stella Maris_
(and fisherman’s rumor had it that Lady Morris was so honored by the
christening), and my only companion for a week in the stuffy cabin was
an independent fur trader on his way to his winter post near Nain. His
baggage consisted of two crates of jam and two volumes by “Richard
Dehan,” and I remember how we banished sleep for several nights and days
by reading them to each other, and then beginning all over again. If I
knew where Richard White was now, I would send him a copy of “Under the
Hermes” to see if the old magic still lingered. It is a collection of
good stories imaginatively told.
_Tales of War_, by _Lord Dunsany_ (Little, Brown & Company). This volume
is a series of sketches and essays dealing with Lord Dunsany’s
experiences in the Great War, but it contains one of his best short
stories,—“The Prayer of the Men of Daleswood,”—and several fine
imaginative fables.
_Five Tales_, by _John Galsworthy_ (Charles Scribner’s Sons). This
collection of short stories and novelettes should be set on the book
shelf beside “The Dark Flower” as one of Galsworthy’s two most signal
contributions to the poetic interpretation of life. It is not too much
to say that this volume takes its place in the great English line.
_The Quest of the Face_, by _Stephen Graham_ (The Macmillan Company).
This volume does not represent the author at his best, but the
passionate mysticism which Mr. Graham has voiced so nobly in his Russian
books still flames through these pages, and there are several sketches
in the volume which I should have felt sorry to have missed.
_Children of the Dear Cotswolds_, by _L. Allen Harker_ (Charles
Scribner’s Sons). These quiet pastoral studies, to be fully enjoyed,
should be read aloud slowly by the winter fire, and I think the reader
will agree with me that they are a very delicate series of studies in
place. Mrs. Harker’s readers have a freemasonry of their own to which
the password is a love for England and its forgotten Cotswold places.
_The Country Air_, by _L. P. Jacks_ (Henry Holt & Company). It is my
particular pride that I was one of the first to hail the remarkable
qualities of Mr. Jacks’ “Wild Shepherds.” I suppose that the present
volume will never be widely popular, but to those who enjoy clean human
observation, a broad philosophical outlook, and an imaginative
transmutation of facts, this volume will be always welcome.
_Waysiders_, by _Seumas O’Kelly_ (Frederick A. Stokes Company). As
Daniel Corkery was the Irish discovery of last year, so Seumas O’Kelly
is the most remarkable Irish find of the present season. These studies
lack the disciplined art of Mr. Corkery, but they have the same rich
imagination, deep folk spirit, and close observation which distinguished
“A Munster Twilight.”
_Chronicles of Saint Tid_, by _Eden Phillpotts_ (The Macmillan Company).
Mr. Phillpotts has done well to collect his magazine stories of the past
ten years. As a novelist he seems to me inferior to “John Trevena,” who
also deals with Dartmoor characters, but the short story with its narrow
confines affords him an excellent opportunity to chronicle the whims of
human nature which he has observed, and to set down simple chronicles of
the countryside which have a romantic atmosphere of their own.
_Nine Tales_, by _Hugh de Sélincourt_ (Dodd, Mead & Company). To those
of us who found in “A Soldier of Life” last year a novel which revealed
far more of the spiritual realities of this war than “Mr. Britling Sees
it Through,” these stories have been awaited with eagerness. In “The
Sacrifice,” Mr. de Sélincourt has surpassed this novel for human
revelation of war’s spiritual effect on England, and “Sense of Sin” is
as fine a story in a different manner. The whole book is an eloquent
plea for spiritual freedom based on physical health and imaginative
life. An art so delicate as this is rare.
_Some Happenings_, by _Horace Annesley Vachell_ (George H. Doran
Company). This is an entertaining collection of stories, by an English
writer in the American manner, and ranges in breadth of interest from
stories of the American West to English mystery stories and French
pastorals.