story. The tone is thoroughly healthy; and Mr. Norris, without being in
the least old-fashioned, manages to get along without the aid of
pessimism, psychology, naturalism, or what is known as frank treatment
of the relations between the sexes.’
=The Westminster Gazette.=—‘Mr. Norris writes throughout with much
liveliness and force, saying now and then something that is worth
remembering. And he sketches his minor characters with a firm touch.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A VICTIM OF GOOD LUCK
BY W. E. NORRIS
_In One Volume, price 6s._
=The Speaker.=—‘_A Victim of Good Luck_ is one of those breezy stories
of his in which the reader finds himself moving in good society, among
men or women who are neither better nor worse than average humanity, but
who always show good manners and good breeding.... Suffice it to say
that the story is as readable as any we have yet had from the same pen.’
=The Daily Telegraph.=—‘_A Victim of Good Luck_ is one of the brightest
novels of the year, which cannot but enhance its gifted author’s
well-deserved fame and popularity.’
=The World.=—‘Here is Mr. Norris in his best form again, giving us an
impossible story with such imperturbable composure, such quiet humour,
easy polish, and irresistible persuasiveness, that he makes us read _A
Victim of Good Luck_ right through with eager interest and unflagging
amusement without being aware, until we regretfully reach the end, that
it is just a farcical comedy in two delightful volumes.’
=The Daily Chronicle.=—‘It has not a dull page from first to last. Any
one with normal health and taste can read a book like this with real
pleasure.’
=The Globe.=—‘Mr. W. E. Norris is a writer who always keeps us on good
terms with ourselves. We can pick up or lay down his books at will, but
they are so pleasant in style and equable in tone that we do not usually
lay them down till we have mastered them; _A Victim of Good Luck_ is a
more agreeable novel than most of this author’s.’
=The Westminster Gazette.=—‘_A Victim of Good Luck_ is in Mr. Norris’s
best vein, which means that it is urbane, delicate, lively, and
flavoured with a high quality of refined humour. Altogether a most
refreshing book, and we take it as a pleasant reminder that Mr. Norris
is still very near his highwater mark.’
=The Spectator.=—‘Mr. Norris displays to the full his general command of
narrative expedients which are at once happily invented and yet quite
natural—which seem to belong to their place in the book, just as a
keystone belongs to its place in the arch.... The brightest and
cleverest book which Mr. Norris has given us since he wrote _The
Rogue_.’
=The Saturday Review.=—‘Novels which are neither dull, unwholesome,
morbid, nor disagreeable, are so rare in these days, that _A Victim of
Good Luck_ ... ought to find a place in a book-box filled for the most
part with light literature.... We think it will increase the reputation
of an already very popular author.’
=The Scotsman.=—‘_A Victim of Good Luck_, like others of this author’s
books, depends little on incident and much on the conception and drawing
of character, on clever yet natural conversation, and on the working
out, with masterly ease, of a novel problem of right and inclination.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE POTTER’S THUMB
BY FLORA ANNIE STEEL
_In One Volume, price 6s._
=The Pall Mall Budget.=—‘For this week the only novel worth mentioning
is Mrs. Steel’s _The Potter’s Thumb_. Her admirable _From the Five
Rivers_, since it dealt with native Indian life, was naturally compared
with Mr. Kipling’s stories. In _The Potter’s Thumb_ the charm which came
from the freshness of them still remains. Almost every character is
convincing, and some of them excellent to a degree.’
=The Globe.=—‘This is a brilliant story—a story that fascinates,
tingling with life, steeped in sympathy with all that is best and
saddest.’
=The Manchester Guardian.=—‘The impression left upon one after reading
_The Potter’s Thumb_ is that a new literary artist, of very great and
unusual gifts, has arisen.... In short, Mrs. Steel must be congratulated
upon having achieved a very genuine and amply deserved success.’
=The Glasgow Herald.=—‘A clever story which, in many respects, brings
India very near to its readers. The novel is certainly one interesting
alike to the Anglo-Indian and to those untravelled travellers who make
their only voyages in novelists’ romantic company.’
=The Scotsman.=—‘It is a capital story, full of variety and movement,
which brings with great vividness before the reader one of the phases of
Anglo-Indian life. Mrs. Steel writes forcibly and sympathetically, and
much of the charm of the picture which she draws lies in the force with
which she brings out the contrast between the Asiatic and European
world. _The Potter’s Thumb_ is very good reading, with its mingling of
the tragedy and comedy of life. Its evil woman _par excellence_ ... is a
finished study.’
=The Westminster Gazette.=—‘A very powerful and tragic story. Mrs. Steel
gives us again, but with greater elaboration than before, one of those
strong, vivid, and subtle pictures of Indian life which we have learnt
to expect from her. To a reader who has not been in India her books seem
to get deeper below the native crust, and to have more of the instinct
for the Oriental than almost anything that has been written in this
time.’
=The Leeds Mercury.=—‘_The Potter’s Thumb_ is a powerful story of the
mystical kind, and one which makes an instant appeal to the imagination
of the reader.... There is an intensity of vision in this story which is
as remarkable as it is rare, and the book, in its vivid and fascinating
revelations of life, and some of its limitations, is at once brilliant
and, in the deepest and therefore least demonstrative sense,
impassioned.’
=The National Observer.=—‘A romance of East and West, in which the
glamour, intrigue, and superstition of India are cunningly interwoven
and artfully contrasted with the bright and changeable aspects of modern
European society. “Love stories,” as Mr. Andrew Lang once observed, “are
best done by women”; and Mrs. Steel’s treatment of Rose Tweedie’s love
affair with Lewis Gordon is a brilliant instance in point. So sane and
delightful an episode is rare in fiction now-a-days.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM THE FIVE RIVERS
BY FLORA ANNIE STEEL
_In One Volume, price 6s._
=The Times.=—‘Time was when these sketches of native Punjabi society
would have been considered a curiosity in literature. They are
sufficiently remarkable, even in these days, when interest in the “dumb
millions” of India is thoroughly alive, and writers, great and small,
vie in ministering to it. They are the more notable as being the work of
a woman. Mrs. Steel has evidently been brought into close contact with
the domestic life of all classes, Hindu and Mahomedan, in city and
village, and has steeped herself in their customs and superstitions....
Mrs. Steel’s book is of exceptional merit and freshness.’
=Vanity Fair.=—‘Stories of the Punjaub—evidently the work of one who has
an intimate knowledge of, and a kindly sympathy for, its people. It is
to be hoped that this is not the last book of Indian stories that Mrs.
Steel will give us.’
=The Spectator.=—‘Merit, graphic force, and excellent local colouring
are conspicuous in Mrs. Steel’s _From the Five Rivers_, and the short
stories of which the volume is composed are evidently the work of a lady
who knows what she is writing about.’
=The Glasgow Herald.=—‘This is a collection of sketches of Hindu life,
full for the most part of brilliant colouring and cleverly wrought in
dialect. The writer evidently knows her subject, and she writes about it
with unusual skill.’
=The North British Daily Mail.=—‘In at least two of the sketches in Mrs.
Steel’s book we have a thoroughly descriptive delineation of life in
Indian, or rather, Hindoo, villages. “Ganesh Chunel” is little short of
a masterpiece, and the same might be said of “Shah Sujah’s Mouse.” In
both we are made the spectator of the conditions of existence in rural
India. The stories are told with an art that conceals the art of
story-telling.’
=The Athenæum.=—‘They possess this great merit, that they reflect the
habits, modes of life, and ideas of the middle and lower classes of the
population of Northern India better than do systematic and more
pretentious works.’
=The Leeds Mercury.-=-‘By no means a book to neglect.... It is written
with brains.... Mrs. Steel understands the life which she describes, and
she has sufficient literary art to describe it uncommonly well. These
short stories of Indian life are, in fact, quite above the average of
stories long or short.... There is originality, insight, sympathy, and a
certain dramatic instinct in the portrayal of character about the book.’
=The Globe.=—‘She puts before us the natives of our Empire in the East
as they live and move and speak, with their pitiful superstitions, their
strange fancies, their melancholy ignorance of what poses with us for
knowledge and civilisation, their doubt of the new ways, the new laws,
the new people. “Shah Sujah’s Mouse,” the gem of the collection—a
touching tale of unreasoning fidelity towards an English "Sinny Baba"—is
a tiny bit of perfect writing.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LAST SENTENCE
BY MAXWELL GRAY
Author of ‘The Silence of Dean Maitland,’ etc.
_In One Volume, price 6s._
=The Standard.=—‘_The Last Sentence_ is a remarkable story; it abounds
with dramatic situations, the interest never for a moment flags, and the
characters are well drawn and consistent.’
=The Saturday Review.=—‘There is a great deal as well as a great variety
of incident in the story, and more than twenty years are apportioned to
it; but it never seems over-crowded, nor has it the appearance of
several stories rolled into one. _The Last Sentence_ is a remarkable
novel, and the more so because its strong situations are produced
without recourse to the grosser forms of immorality.’
=The Daily Telegraph.=—‘One of the most powerful and adroitly-worked-out
plots embodied in any modern work of fiction runs through _The Last
Sentence_.... This terrible tale of retribution is told with
well-sustained force and picturesqueness, and abounds in light as well
as shade.’
=The Morning Post.=—‘Maxwell Gray has the advantage of manner that is
both cultured and picturesque, and while avoiding even the appearance of
the melodramatic, makes coming events cast a shadow before them so as to
excite and entertain expectation.... It required the imagination of an
artist to select the kind of Nemesis which finally overtakes this
successful evil-doer, and which affords an affecting climax to a rather
fascinating tale.’
=The Glasgow Herald.=—‘This is a very strong story.... It contains much
rich colouring, some striking situations, and plenty of thoroughly
living characters. The interest is of a varied kind, and, though the
hero is an aristocrat, the pictures of human life are by no means
confined to the upper circles.’
=The Leeds Mercury.=—‘It shows a command of the resources of the
novelist’s art which is by no means common, and it has other qualities
which lift it far above the average level of the circulating library. It
is written with a literary grace and a moral insight which are seldom at
fault, and from first to last it is pervaded with deep human interest.’
=The Queen.=—‘Maxwell Gray has a certain charm and delicacy of style.
She has mastered the subtleties of a particular type of weak character
until she may be almost called its prophet.’
=The Lady’s Pictorial.=—‘The book is a clever and powerful one....
Cynthia Marlowe will live in our memories as a sweet and noble woman;
one of whom it is a pleasure to think of beside some of the
‘emancipated’ heroines so common in the fiction of the day.’
=The Manchester Courier.=—‘The author of _The Silence of Dean Maitland_
gives to the reading world another sound and magnificent work.... In
both these works Maxwell Gray has taken “Nemesis” as his grand _motif_.
In each work there sits behind the hero that _atra cura_ which poisons
the wholesome draught of human joy. In each is present the corroding
blight that comes of evil done and not discovered.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE NAULAHKA
A Tale of West and East
BY RUDYARD KIPLING AND WOLCOTT BALESTIER
_In One Volume, price 6s._
=The Athenæum.=—‘There is no one but Mr. Kipling who can make his
readers taste and smell, as well as see and hear, the East; and in this
book (if we except the description of Tarvin’s adventures in the
deserted city of Gunvaur, which is perhaps less clear-cut than usual) he
has surely surpassed himself. In his faculty for getting inside the
Eastern mind and showing its queer workings Mr. Kipling stands alone.’
=The Academy.=—‘_The Naulahka_ contains passages of great merit. There
are descriptions scattered through its pages which no one but Mr.
Kipling could have written.... Whoever reads this novel will find much
of it hard to forget ... and the story of the exodus from the hospital
will rank among the best passages in modern fiction.’
=The Times.=—‘A happy idea, well adapted to utilize the respective
experience of the joint authors.... An excellent story.... The dramatic
train of incident, the climax of which is certainly the interview
between Sitabhai and Tarvin, the alternate crudeness and ferocity of the
girl-queen, the susceptibility of the full-blooded American, hardly kept
in subjection by his alertness and keen eye to business, the anxious
eunuch waiting in the distance with the horses, and fretting as the
stars grow paler and paler, the cough of the tiger slinking home at the
dawn after a fruitless night’s hunt—the whole forms a scene not easily
effaced from the memory.’
=The Glasgow Herald.=—‘An entrancing story beyond doubt.... The design
is admirable—to bring into violent contrast and opposition the widely
differing forces of the Old World and the New—and while, of course, it
could have been done without the use of Americanese, yet that gives a
wonderful freshness and realism to the story. The design is a bold one,
and it has been boldly carried out.... The interest is not only
sustained throughout, it is at times breathless.... The Maharajah, the
rival queens, the pomp and peril of Rhatore, are clearly Mr. Kipling’s
own, and some of the Indian chapters are in his best style.’
=The Speaker.=—‘In the presentation of Rhatore there is something of the
old Kiplingesque glamour; it is to the pages of Mr. Kipling that one
must go for the strange people and incidents of the royal household at
Rhatore.... It is enough to say that the plotting of that most beautiful
and most wicked gipsy, Sitabhai is interesting; that Sitabhai is well
created; and that the chapter which describes her secret meeting with
Tarvin is probably the finest and the most impressive in the book.’
=The Bookman.=—‘The real interest of the book is in the life behind the
curtains of the Maharajah’s palace. The child Kunwar, his mother, the
forsaken Zulu queen, the gipsy with her wicked arts, are pictures of
Indian life, which even Mr. Kipling has not surpassed.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CORRUPTION
BY PERCY WHITE
_In One Volume, price 6s._
=The Speaker.=—‘In his first book, _Mr. Bailey-Martin_, Mr. White gave
us a remarkable picture of the sordidness of life in a suburban
household. In the present volume he rises to a higher social level, and
treats of rising members of Parliament, of political leaders, and even
of Prime Ministers.... The sketches of types are both forcible and
true.’
=The Pall Mall Gazette.=—‘None can travel over his brightly-written
pages without being gladdened by the little flashes of epigram which
light up the scene for us, or stirred by the shrewdness and worldly
wisdom which he has put into the mouths of his characters. One of the
charms of the book lies in the conviction that its author knows the
world, and is full of a broad, full knowledge, and therefore sympathy
with the foibles, passions, and sins with which it abounds.... It is a
sermon preached on the old Æschylian text, that the evil doer must
always suffer. The book is a drama of biting intensity, a tragedy of
inflexible purpose and relentless result.’
=The Daily News.=—‘Will appeal to many tastes. There is intrigue enough
in it for those who love a story of the ordinary kind, and the political
part is perhaps rather more attractive in its sparkle and variety of
incident than the real thing itself.’
=The Daily Telegraph.=—‘_Corruption_ more than fulfils the brilliant
promise of _Mr. Bailey-Martin_.... As its title indicates, it deals with
the political and social cankers of the day, which it lays bare with a
fearless and unerring touch.’
=The Standard.=—‘The scenes in the South of France are particularly well
done; without any attempt at local colour Mr. White has caught the
atmosphere skilfully, and there are one or two clever touches of which
he appears unconscious. Taking the book as a whole, it is written with
ease and knowledge, and has about it nothing of the amateur.’
=The Graphic.=—‘A very able piece of work.’
=Black and White.=—‘The risqué situation is wrought with brilliance and
subtilty.... Mrs. Mannering recalls Becky Sharp; and Carew is a typical
man of the day.... Mr. Percy White assuredly takes rank with the
foremost of the society writers.’
=The Globe.=—‘A graphic picture of social life.’
=The Glasgow Herald.=—‘The characters are well conceived and cleverly
portrayed; the dialogue is crisp and sparkling. There is not a dull
moment in the volume.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MR. BAILEY-MARTIN
BY PERCY WHITE
With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author
_In One Volume, price 6s._
=The Times.=—‘Mr. White has written an audacious book.’
=The Athenæum.=—‘Mr. White, with the aid of the necessary qualities—dry
humour and delicate irony—succeeds nearly all the time.... The character
is one exceedingly difficult to portray.... Mr. White has resisted the
temptation to force and exaggerate the note, and this is probably the
secret of his success.’
=The Speaker.=—‘There is cleverness enough in _Mr. Bailey-Martin_ to
furnish forth a dozen novels.... It shows not only a remarkable
knowledge of contemporary life, but a keen insight into character, and a
considerable degree of literary power.’
=The Daily Telegraph.=—‘The book teems with smart sayings and graphic
characterisations, and cannot fail to make a mark among the cleverest
novels of the year.’
=The Daily Chronicle.=—‘The book must be pronounced a well-nigh
unqualified triumph.’
=The Literary World.=—‘_Mr. Bailey-Martin_ is one of those books whose
opportune arrival serves to reconcile the critic to his task.... Bright,
fresh, vigorous in action, and told with a wealth of incident and
humour.’
=The New Budget=, _in a criticism on_ Mr. Percy White _as a novelist,
says_—‘In my opinion, you are by far the cleverest of the younger—or
shall I say, youngest?—generation of writers, with the exception,
perhaps, of Mr. Street.... Your prose possesses in a high degree what I
may call the lyrical note. At times you write like a poet rather than a
writer of prose.... You serve in no school, and imitate no man.... In
_Mr. Bailey-Martin_, though you write with an affectation of wholly
dispassionate observation of your snob and his set, there is underlying
that attitude a measureless contempt for your hero (if I may call him
so) and his friends, which bites like an acid.’
=The National Observer.=—‘Admirably clever, and deserving to be read by
those who are bored with the average novel.’
=The Bookman.=—‘One of the cleverest novels we have seen for many a
day.... Take away from the average man a little of his affectation, and
all his responsibilities; add some impudence, and the production of a
Bailey-Martin is highly probable. We congratulate Mr. White on the
vigour and vitality of his novel.’
=The Scotsman.=—‘When it is remembered that this story is told by Mr.
Bailey-Martin himself, and with a great air of verisimilitude, it will
be seen how able the book is as a piece of literature.... It will
interest and entertain every one who takes it up.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TERMINATIONS
BY HENRY JAMES
_In One Volume, price 6s._
=The Times.=—‘All the stories are told by a man whose heart and soul are
in his profession of literature.’
=The Morning Post.=—‘The discriminating will not fail to recognise in
the tales composing this volume workmanship of a very high order and a
wealth of imaginative fancy that is, in a measure, a revelation.’
=The Athenæum.=—‘The appearance of _Terminations_ will in no way shake
the general belief in Mr. Henry James’s accomplished touch and command
of material. On the contrary, it confirms conclusions long since
foregone, and will increase the respect of his readers.... With such
passages of trenchant wit and sparkling observation, surely in his best
manner, Mr. James ought to be as satisfied as his readers cannot fail to
be.’
=The Daily News.=—‘Mr. James is a critic of life rather than a maker of
stories; his appeal is more to the intellect than to the imagination.
_Terminations_ is a collection of four stories written with that
choiceness and conciseness of phrase that distinguishes the work of the
literary artist.... _The Altar of the Dead_ is more mystic and
imaginative. Mr. James finds phrases that express incomparably well the
more spiritual longings of our nature, and this story is full of tender
suggestiveness.’
=The Pall Mall Gazette.=—‘What strikes one, in fact, in every corner of
Mr. James’s work is his inordinate cleverness. These four tales are so
clever, that one can only raise one’s hands in admiration. The insight,
the sympathy with character, the extraordinary observation, and the neat
and dexterous phrasing—these qualities are everywhere visible.’
=The Scotsman.=—‘All the stories are peculiar and full of a rare
interest.’
=The Manchester Guardian.=—‘... But with _The Altar of the Dead_ it is
far otherwise. To attempt to criticise a creation so exquisite, so
instinct with the finest and purest human feeling, so penetrated with
the fastidious distinction of a sensitive spirit, would indeed be
superfluous, if not impertinent. On its own lines, we know of no more
beautiful, truer prose poem in the English language, and to have written
it is to have formulated a claim to recollection which we do not think
will be lightly set aside.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HERBERT VANLENNERT
BY C. F. KEARY
_In One Volume, price 6s._
=The National Observer.=—‘Clever characterisation, natural dialogue,
moral sanity, and keen observation and knowledge of the world.... The
minor characters are as diverse as they are numerous, and there is not a
lay figure in the book.’