(3c) Putnam 940.3
20–6967
This volume “dealing particularly with its military and diplomatic
aspects and the part played in it by the United States” (Sub-title),
offers a general outline story of the war with the main object of
giving a clear and accurate running account of its origin and
progress. It is a complement to the author’s other book, “The strategy
of the great war,” and gives in detail all the outstanding facts and
principal operations of the war with appendices and an index.
* * * * *
“Because this book relates to military policy, it is equally
interesting to the trained soldier and to the intelligent civilian.”
X. Y. Z.
+ =Nation= 111:106 Jl 24 ’20 950w
“The only regret of the reader in regard to Mr McPherson’s one-volume
history of the war is that it has no maps; otherwise, within the
limitations of space set, it leaves nothing to be desired.” Walter
Littlefield
+ =N Y Times= p6 D 19 ’20 380w
“Clear and good it is, but it leaves the impression in one’s mind of
newspaper material dished up into a book. On the score of originality
of presentation, freshness of statement, vigor of style, it suffers by
comparison with Pollard’s, nor does it exhibit the same nicety of
proportion and balance.”
+ − =Review= 3:424 N 3 ’20 170w
=R of Rs= 61:670 Je ’20 100w
+ =St Louis= 18:238 O ’20 40w
=MACQUARRIE, HECTOR.= Tahiti days. il *$4.50 (7½c) Doran 919.6
20–19772
The author was ordered to the Tahiti Islands for his health and found
it there, and now invites the reader to step onto his magic carpet and
follow him thither, to the fairy land of the South seas, to the
“Island of tranquil delight” where the gentle Polynesians will pluck
oranges for him, climb the cocoanut palms for nuts for him and regale
him with their bananas and breadfruit and where he can see the natives
diving for pearls. Among the contents are: Raratonga; The Moana;
Tahiti; Babies; The hula-hula; Hikuero, the pearl island; Pearl
diving; Breakfast on Hikuero; The Marai and Miggimiggi; Firewalking on
Tahiti; The epidemic. The book is profusely illustrated.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:151 Ja ’21
“He writes of his stay in Tahiti in an interesting fashion, although
he spoils his book by his coarseness and his contempt for the moral
law. He is at his best when he describes the pearl diving near Kikuero
Island, the pagan rite of the fire-walkers of Tahiti, or the customs
of the natives.”
+ − =Cath World= 112:695 F ’21 130w
“It is a charming book, and one well calculated to disturb the
contentment of any city dweller.” B. R. Redman
+ =N Y Times= p12 D 26 ’20 1450w
“It is one of the most entertaining of the recent books about
adventure in the islands of the Pacific.”
+ =Outlook= 126:558 N 24 ’20 70w
“Hector MacQuarrie’s ‘Tahiti days’ is a much more creditable book than
some other recent works on the same subject. Mr MacQuarrie writes with
appreciation of the islands and the people, he writes with directness
and humor, and best of all he writes like a man, not like a snickering
little boy with naughty stories to tell.” E. L. Pearson
+ =Review= 3:558 D 8 ’20 110w
=MCSPADDEN, JOSEPH WALKER=, ed. Famous detective stories. *$1.50 (2c)
Crowell
20–15065
The stories selected for this collection are: The purloined letter, by
Edgar Allan Poe; An interview with M. Lecoq, by Emile Gaboriau; A
scandal in Bohemia, by A. Conan Doyle; The adventure of the hansom
cabs, by Robert Louis Stevenson; The adventure of the toadstools, by
Sax Rohmer; Gentlemen and players, by E. W. Hornung; The black hand,
by Arthur B. Reeve; The grotto spectre, by Anna Katherine Green; The
mystery of the steel disk, by Broughton Brandenburg; The sign of the
shadow, by Maurice Le Blanc; The mystery of the steel room, by Thomas
W. Hanshew.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 17:72 N ’20
=Freeman= 2:142 O 20 ’20 150w
“There is much entertainment in J. Walker McSpadden’s eleven ‘Famous
detective stories.’ One thing is certain, the detective story,
entertaining as it may be, is the most thoroughly standardized product
in modern literature, as bright and hard and competent as a jackknife,
and hardly one iota more humane.”
+ − =Nation= 111:354 S 25 ’20 220w
=Springf’d Republican= p5a Ja 30 ’21 130w
=Wis Lib Bul= 16:195 N ’20 80w
=MCSPADDEN, JOSEPH WALKER=, ed. Famous psychic stories. *$1.50 (2½c)
Crowell
20–16801
Mr McSpadden, who had compiled an earlier collection of ghost stories,
touches on the difference between the “psychic” and the “ghost” story
in his introduction. In the latter the “old fashioned spook”
predominates, while the wide range possible under the term psychic is
disclosed by his analysis of the twelve stories. These stories are:
The white old maid, by Nathaniel Hawthorne; The facts in the case of
M. Valdemar, by Edgar Allan Poe; The dream woman, by Wilkie Collins;
The open door, by Margaret Oliphant; The stalls of Barchester
cathedral, by Montague Rhodes James; The man who went too far, by E.
F. Benson; Moxon’s master, by Ambrose Bierce; The beast with five
fingers, by W. F. Harvey; From the loom of the dead, by Elia W.
Peattie; The ghoul, by Evangeline W. Blashfield; The shadows on the
wall, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman; The widow’s mite, by Isaac K. Funk.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 17:118 D ’20
=Outlook= 126:334 O 20 ’20 140w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p9a O 31 ’20 140w
=Wis Lib Bul= 16:195 N ’20 90w
=MACVEAGH, EWEN CAMERON, and BROWN, LEE D.= Yankee in the British zone.
il *$2.50 (3c) Putnam 940.373
20–3186
The object of the book which has a foreword by Major General Wood, and
which gives an account of the good understanding and mutual
helpfulness existing between the British and American troops is to
point a lesson for preparedness so that we may not “become too well
satisfied with the outstanding fact that the war was ultimately won,”
but may plan during the new phase of our history upon which we are now
entering what to retain of and what to add to our hastily constructed
military machine. Among the contents are: Getting acquainted; Reasons
for the Yankee in the British zone; Tommy Atkins’ estate in France;
The Yanks explore and rehearse: Off for the battle of a hundred days;
The breaking of the Hindenburg line; Hun opinions of the Yankee;
Accomplishments, discoveries, and results of the Yankee in the British
zone. There are many illustrations and four appendices.
* * * * *
“The humorous tone saves the book from the charge of propagandism.”
+ =Booklist= 16:238 Ap ’20
“The book contains a wealth of anecdotes, which throw light on the
failings of both American and English soldiers towards each other.” O.
McK.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 F 14 ’20 480w
“It is good-humoured, accurate, full of incident, and a bit ‘hurrah.’”
+ =Dial= 68:539 Ap ’20 40w
“A frank, brave, sportsmanly record.” Coningsby Dawson
+ =N Y Times= 25:1 F 22 ’20 1200w
“The humorous as well as the serious side of soldier life comes out in
strong relief.”
+ =Outlook= 124:291 F 18 ’20 120w
“The authors are announced as ‘trained observers,’ and the reader
concedes the title, adding that of trained or naturally facile
writers, for they have dressed their material with real skill.”
+ =Review= 2:436 Ap 24 ’20 420w
=R of Rs= 61:336 Mr ’20 80w
+ =Spec= 125:573 O 30 ’20 180w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p638 S 30 ’20 180w
=MAGNUSSEN, JULIUS.= God’s smile; tr. by Daniel Kilham Dodge. *$1.75
(4½c) Appleton 134
20–13992
A work translated from the Danish. The author is a Danish dramatist
whose plays have been produced at the National theater. At the age of
thirty-seven and at the height of his popularity he suddenly lost
interest in the comedy he was writing and found his attention turned
to psychic matters by a series of curious experiences. These are
described in this book. They began with table rappings, which aroused
only amusement and derision, and continued with automatic writings
which finally routed his scepticism. The book is said to have run thru
ten editions in the first month of publication in Denmark.
* * * * *
“There is little imaginative power and no trace of originality in
these supposed communications from the spirit world, which bear a
familiar stamp of vague and grandiloquent optimism. The translation
does not impress us as particularly good.”
− =Ath= p678 N 19 ’20 70w
“Deeply sincere, and well told in spite of excessive egoism and
introspection.”
+ − =Booklist= 17:7 O ’20
“The book is spiritism watered and sugared; its ‘God’ will make
converts for atheism, and its ‘smile’ will beget pessimists.”
− =Review= 3:350 O 20 ’20 250w
“As a matter of fact, his self-revelation is more interesting than are
the psychical experiences that he narrates.” Lilian Whiting
+ =Springf’d Republican= p7a N 28 ’20 320w
“Mr Magnussen begins his account in a vein of naive egotism, which—at
any rate when in the dress of another language—sometimes approaches
the comic; but as he proceeds his story assumes a literary quality by
means of its directness and simplicity.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p687 O 21 ’20 100w
=Wis Lib Bul= 16:232 D ’20 20w
=MAIS, STUART PETRE BRODIE.= Books and their writers. *$2 Dodd 824
(Eng ed 20–9510)
A series of literary essays and reviews. The author says, “All I have
sought to do has been to convey some of the pleasure I have gained
from desultory reading of all kinds during the last few years.” In
part 1, Novelists and novels, he writes of Compton Mackenzie, Norman
Douglas, Frank Swinnerton, Stephen McKenna, Jane Austen, Clemence
Dane, Dorothy Richardson. Part 2, Poetry and poets, is devoted to J.
C. Squire, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Nichols, Dora Sigerson, Chinese
poetry. Part 3, Books in general, contains reviews of Strachey’s
“Eminent Victorians,” Smith’s “Trivia,” and other recent works, also
papers on Alice Meynell as critic and Lafcadio Hearn. Some of the
essays are reprinted from the Fortnightly Review and To-day.
* * * * *
“A light and sketchy, appreciative and not over-critical, yet useful
contribution to the history of current literature.”
+ =Ath= p384 Mr 19 ’20 90w
“There is not one author treated by Mr Mais of whom the reader will
get a just estimate, for frothy appreciation is not justice; but there
is one author whom the reader will come to know all too well, and he
is Mr Mais. Even in his interminable and ill-written summaries of
other men’s work, of which the bulk of the book consists, Mr Mais
obtrudes himself. He cannot create, he cannot judge, and with his own
clamour he deafens judgment.” O. W.
− =Ath= p542 Ap 23 ’20 1300w
“The most interesting part of Mr Mais’s ‘Books and their writers’ is,
to my mind, that devoted to novels and novelists.” K. F. Gerould
+ − =Bookm= 52:264 N ’20 460w
“Although Mr Mais’s title is commonplace, his essays are not likewise
dull. They are variable in quality, to be sure, and there is in them a
revelation of the critical faculty their writer so explicitly denies
himself.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p5 S 22 ’20 750w
“An easily readable book, full of time beguiling extracts from the
authors under review—an excellent reference book to supplement more
critical and comprehensive works on contemporary literature.”
+ =N Y Evening Post= p8 S 25 ’20 170w
“One likes Mr Mais because he likes all sorts of things, and writes
about them with a zest which compels you to like them, too, whether
you agree with his judgments or not.” R: Le Gallienne
+ − =N Y Times= p8 O 17 ’20 1700w
“He has undeniable talent, great industry, almost fanatical
enthusiasm: such qualities might carry a man far, but his untidy and
careless mind is in danger of wrecking his literary career almost at
the outset.”
+ − =Sat R= 129:280 Mr 20 ’20 950w
“Mr Mais has not much of value to say: he just flows on chatting
intelligently about the books people are reading (or supposed to be
reading) and the authors they are talking about.”
− + =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p142 F 26 ’20 240w
=MAJOR, CLARE TREE.= How to develop your will power. (How to develop
ser.) *$1.25 (4c) Clode, E. J. 170
20–14873
This volume, which follows “How to develop your personality” and “How
to develop your speaking voice,” has chapters on Self-examination;
Will: its power, function and development; Physical dominance (three
chapters); Be courageous; Learn the value of habit; Self-control;
Self-control and business power; Business success; Will in idealism;
with a Review of chapters at the close.
* * * * *
+ =N Y Evening Post= p11 N 6 ’20 50w
=MALDCLEWITH, RONSBY, pseud.= Professor’s love-life. *$1.50 Macmillan
19–19246
“The book comprises a series of genuine letters, written by a man who
here appears under the name of Ronsby Maldclewith to his fiancée,
Katherine, a woman of the old South now some years dead. They are
published in accordance with a wish expressed by her. The young
professor, devotee of literature and art, within a few months of the
discovery of their mutual love, becomes the victim of incipient lung
trouble. The letters to Katherine—from Denver during an apparently
beneficial sojourn; from New York city, where he settles in order to
be able to consult often with great specialists; from his home, to
which he returns full of courage and hope of ultimate recovery, and
lastly from Denver, where he loses the great fight—are intensely
pathetic and from beginning to end tell a story of measureless
devotion.”—Springf’d Republican
* * * * *
+ =Ath= p463 Ap 2 ’20 80w
=Boston Transcript= p6 Ja 7 ’20 120w
+ =Dial= 68:399 Mr ’20 60w
“Were it not for beauty of language, pathos, lofty sentiment and apt
quotations, there is no denying that reading the book would at times
be depressing.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p6 F 9 ’20 360w
“It would be hard to trace the impalpable quality which stamps these
letters with the seal of truth: but it is there to illustrate the law
that style is the touchstone of all fine and sincere literature.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p38 Ja 15 ’20 600w
=MALINS, GEOFFREY H.= How I filmed the war; ed. by Low Warren. il *$4
Stokes 940.48
(Eng ed 19–19271)
“This stirring narrative describes the innumerable adventures that
occurred to Mr Malins in the pursuit of cinematograph records of the
fighting on the western front. Mr Malins’ devotion to his job is
surpassed only by his courage.”—Ath
* * * * *
=Ath= p1083 O 24 ’19 40w
“Very few men have displayed such courage and devotion in winning an
empire or in winning a wife as Mr Malins has shown in taking his war
films. That he is alive to write a book (and an extremely good book)
about them is one of the incredible things of the war.”
+ =Ath= p1121 O 31 ’19 600w
“A brisk interesting account of soldiering with the camera. It gives
assurance that the scenes of war in the movies were taken at the
front, often in positions of danger.”
+ =Booklist= 16:200 Mr ’20
“The pictures are good, and his story, told in a very conversational
and natural way, is especially instructive.” J. S. B.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ja 17 ’20 500w
“No doubt Mr Malins’s volume is making a stir in cinematographic
circles; but apart from them, we question if it will have a long
career as a ‘library book.’ The films themselves were efficiently
done, but they were all that counted; there was not enough stuff left
to make a readable book.”
− + =Sat R= 130:99 Jl 31 ’19 370w
“Very readable account.”
+ =Spec= 123:512 O 18 ’19 50w
“There was excellent material for a book in all these adventures, and
Lieutenant Malins writes with great spirit, if without any special
distinction of style.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p598 O 30 ’19 440w
=MALLOCK, WILLIAM HURRELL.= Memoirs of life and literature. il *$2.50
Harper
20–16292
“Memoirs,” says the author, “represent life as seen by the writers
from a personal point of view.... Thus if any writer attempts to do
what I have done myself—namely, to examine or depict in books of
widely different kinds such aspects and problems of life—social,
philosophical, religious, and economic—as have in turn engrossed his
special attention, he may venture to hope that a memoir of his own
activities will be taken as representing an age, rather than a
personal story.” (Chapter I) The first three chapters are devoted to
the author’s family antecedents and early life and some of the other
chapters are: Winter society at Torquay; The basis of London society;
Vignettes of London life; Society in country houses; From country
houses to politics; Cyprus, Florence, Hungary; Two works on social
politics; Religious philosophy and fiction; Politics and society in
America; Literature and action. The book has an index and a number of
portraits of famous writers.
* * * * *
=Ath= p583 O 29 ’20 1300w
“To some the philosophy will seem too self-satisfied and the ease of
tone, varied only by urbane satire, indicative of a class heedlessness
of much of the passion, discontent and injustice below the surface.”
+ − =Booklist= 17:153 Ja ’21
Reviewed by H: L. West
+ =Bookm= 52:269 N ’20 480w
“His ingenious mingling of the records of his own life and mental
progress and achievement with accounts of his contact with other men
and women of his time, give to Mr Mallock’s memoirs a rare quality.
Its pages are all filled with an exceptional sympathy for the mental
attitude of even those from whom he differed on problems of vital and
lasting importance.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p8 S 18 ’20 1800w
Reviewed by R. M. Lovett
=Dial= 70:217 F ’21 2100w
“It is with something of shock that we discover Mr Mallock’s
conservatism as unyielding as when in the complacent days before the
war he came to expound it from the rostrums of our universities.
Events have marched, but Mr Mallock has not marched with them. And
yet, disappointing though it is, Mr Mallock’s volume contains chapters
that redeem it from the commonplace.”
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p6 S 18 ’20 1100w
“Too much of the memoirs are snobbery, genealogical dissertations and
comments on the author’s own novels and economic studies. He possessed
the opportunity for a surprisingly good book but he has not wholly
availed himself of it.” H. S. Gorman
− + =N Y Times= p12 O 3 ’20 2100w
“What the author has given us in his books, with all sincerity, has
been, so it seems, not ‘confessions’ by any means, but his real inner
thought without compromise or unexpressed reservations. This, rather
than its suavity of style, its variety of interests, its numerous
personalities, explains the charm of the volume. There is an air of
intellectual and moral success and good-breeding about it such as one
rarely finds.”
+ =No Am= 212:713 N ’20 1850w
“His comments and anecdotes are not always agreeable or calculated to
give the reader high ideals.”
− =Outlook= 126:238 O 6 ’20 220w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson
+ =Review= 3:249 S 22 ’20 150w
“This constant didacticism goes far to spoil what is otherwise so
good. If only Mr Mallock had expended his energies more exclusively on
the descriptive and anecdotal parts of his book, he might have
produced a work of rare charm; he has the insight and the literary
skill to have done this.”
+ − =Review= 3:377 O 27 ’20 950w
+ =R of Rs= 62:446 O ’20 80w
=Spec= 125:470 O 9 ’20 1500w
“Delightfully entertaining work. Not once in a blue moon do lovers of
good literature fall upon anything so richly suggestive, so charmingly
satisfying.” Lilian Whiting
+ =Springf’d Republican= p9a O 3 ’20 2300w
“Mr Mallock in the lucidity of his style, in his confident logic and
graceful sense of proportion, in his fastidiousness and his cynical
undertones, betrays the mind of the eighteenth-century aristocrat.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p597 S 16 ’20 1800w
=MALONE, CECIL L’ESTRANGE.= Russian republic. *$1 (4½c) Harcourt 947
20–5655
As the basis for an opinion as to the possibilities of peace
negotiations with Soviet Russia, the author undertook an examination
of the political, social and military conditions there at first hand,
by a personal visit. The book records his findings in diary form
interspersed with interviews, conversations and personal reflections.
Throughout, the author draws a comparison with the French revolution
and concludes that the only way to head off a military dictatorship in
Russia is through one of two policies; the unthinkable one of making
war on her on a grand scale, or “to make every effort to give the
Soviet republic internal and external peace, and to establish
commercial bonds with them, to the great blessing of mankind and to
the prosperity of all countries.” Contents: Introductory; To
Petrograd; Moscow; Social reconstruction; Trotsky and the red army;
Industry; Religion and women; The peace terms; Homeward bound;
Conclusions; Appendix—Prinkipo and Nansen.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 16:308 Je ’20
“Colonel Malone’s attitude is one of a somewhat suspicious solicitude;
he is aware of the danger of being taken in, and this gives to his
report an air of special authenticity. Perhaps the most interesting
chapter is that dealing with the Red army.”
+ =Freeman= 1:167 Ap 28 ’20 300w
“Colonel Malone’s book will be popular among sympathizers with Soviet
Russia, especially those of a more or less conservative stripe. It
explodes the grosser fabrications about Russia without implying too
much violence against what cautious folk conceive to be a properly
centered world. Its superficiality from this point of view may prove
an asset: for no one can deny that it is essentially a superficial
study.” Evans Clark
+ − =Nation= 111:47 Jl 10 ’20 750w
=R of Rs= 61:556 My ’20 60w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p90 F 5 ’20 150w
=MANDER, JANE.= Story of a New Zealand river. *$1.75 (1c) Lane
20–4462
A story by an author apparently familiar with the country of which she
writes. For its beginnings it goes back a full generation to a pioneer
age in a new country. Alice Roland is as unfitted for this life as her
husband is fitted for it. An English woman, adrift with a young child,
she accepts Tom Roland’s offer of marriage and goes with him up the
river to the wild country where he is to carve out his fortune. She
has never loved him, and finds her life, with its hardships and
recurrent child bearing, dreary enough. Then love for her husband’s
partner, David Bruce, comes to complicate the situation. Alice’s
scruples and David’s loyalty to his partner keep them from
transgression. In the meantime Alice’s daughter, Asia, grows up, with
ideals very different from her mother’s, with a sure knowledge of what
she wants, and she doesn’t let the fact that the man she loves is
already married stand in her way. There are good pictures of the New
Zealand landscape and of its developing civilization.
* * * * *
“She lacks confidence and the courage of her opinions: like the
wavering, fearful heroine, she leans too hard on England. There are
moments when we catch a bewilderingly vivid glimpse of what she really
felt and knew about the small settlement of people in the lumbercamp,
but we suspect that these are moments when she is off her guard. These
serve nothing but to increase our impatience with Miss Mander. Why is
her book not half as long, twice as honest?” K. M.
− + =Ath= p49 Jl 9 ’20 600w
Reviewed by R. M. Underhill
=Bookm= 51:440 Je ’20 160w
“The author not only knows her country, but those who live in it, and
she describes both with strong feeling and yet with artistic
restraint.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p11 Ap 17 ’20 250w
“The theme of this book is good but it is not good enough for 430
pages of closely printed matter. Of the characters that create ‘The
story of a New Zealand river,’ which, by the way, is an extremely bad
title, nothing but praise may be given.” H. S. G.
+ − =New Repub= 23:234 Jl 21 ’20 650w
“The novel presents an interesting picture of pioneer life on the
unnamed river and some of Alice’s struggles are well portrayed, but
there is so much reiteration and so much of what can only be called
padding that the effect of the novel is greatly weakened and it loses
its hold on the reader long before the climax is reached.”
+ − =N Y Times= 25:240 My 9 ’20 380w
“The author handles this tale of an isolated New Zealand lumber camp
with considerable romantic effect.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11a Je 27 ’20 220w
“The authoress has a real ability to describe character and
differences of outlook; but she does not allow the plot to become lost
in disquisitions. The book would have been more emphatic if it could
have been shortened, but in its present form it is a patient study of
one example of the immemorial clash between impulse and convention.
The authoress never exactly hits the bull’s-eye, but she is always on
the target.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p386 Je 17 ’20 220w
=MANNERS, JOHN HARTLEY.= All clear, God of my faith, and God’s outcast.
*$1.25 Doran 812
20–4129
These three plays: All clear; God of my faith; and God’s outcast,
“written during the horrors of the unjust and cruel war forced by
Germany upon civilisation ... founded on actual incidents, may serve
to keep alive remembrance of some of the barbarous outrages
perpetrated by the Hun on innocent and wretched peoples.” (Foreword)
They are songs of hate and the Germans, in the author’s opinion, are
“a race apart, unfit to associate with and to be shunned forevermore.”
* * * * *
=Springf’d Republican= p13a Ap 25 ’20 480w
=MANSBRIDGE, ALBERT.= Adventure in working-class education. *$2 (*6s)
Longmans 374.2
“This book chronicles the genesis and growth of the Workers’
educational association which was founded to promote the higher
education of working men and women by means of an alliance between
co-operation, trades unionism, and university extension. It began in
1903, not without opposition and with very little financial support,
which Mr Mansbridge, to whose enthusiasm the organisation owes much of
its vitality, counts like a true fighter amongst the reasons for its
success. Mr Mansbridge and his colleagues preserved their eager
optimism even through the depressing years of the war until, at the
present day, they can number over seventeen thousand members in the
British islands and many prosperous branches in Australia, New
Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. The vivifying idea of the movement
is that most workers have an interest in education if they would only
realize it; and to stimulate that interest and provide facilities for
its gratification are the objects for which the association was
formed.”—Spec
* * * * *
=Ath= p814 Je 18 ’20 80w
+ =Spec= 124:85 Jl 17 ’20 480w
“This book is a short but inspiring introduction to the spirit of the
whole movement. In passages it rises to levels of fine eloquence. The
prologue should be read by every teacher; and the whole spirit of the
movement should become known to social workers and lovers of democracy
everywhere.” J. K. Hart
+ =Survey= 45:136 O 23 ’20 320w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p304 My 13 ’20 40w
=MANTLE, MRS BEATRICE.= In the house of another. *$1.90 (2½c) Century
20–17410
When the heroine of the story comes back to consciousness after an
auto accident, she finds herself in a strange environment and among
unfamiliar people. She even realizes she has a husband, Alan Leland,
whose existence she has no remembrance of, and a circle of friends
whom she does not recognize. But they take her quite for granted,
which adds to her mystification. She wonders if she is out of her
mind. The difficulties of the situation are increased by Willett
Renshaw’s attitude to her which is that of a recognized lover. His
attentions are distressing to her, but she does not understand the
situation clearly enough to be able to straighten it out. Renshaw’s
attitude finally results in her separation from Alan, to her sorrow.
But she bravely tries to reconstruct her life on a new plan, until a
wise friend who realizes that there is some big trouble in her life
goes to the bottom of her fears and paves the way for her future
happiness and Alan’s.
* * * * *
“It needs a Wells or at least an Anstey (as in ‘Vice versa’ or ‘The
statement of Stella Maberly’) to carry out this idea of exchanged
personalities satisfactorily.”
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p21 O 23 ’20 90w
“As a novel written to divert and mystify, ‘In the house of another’
succeeds in its purpose.”
+ =N Y Times= p11 O 17 ’20 220w
=MANTLE, BURNS=, ed. Best plays of 1919–20, and the Year book of the
drama in America. *$2 Small 822
20–21432
This volume marks the first appearance of a new annual which attempts
to do for the professional drama what Mr Braithwaite’s anthology does
for poetry and Mr O’Brien’s year book for the short story. Mr Mantle
has selected ten of the successful plays from the New York season of
1919–20 and has presented them, partly in summary, partly in dialog.
They are: Abraham Lincoln, by John Drinkwater; Beyond the horizon, by
Eugene O’Neill: The famous Mrs Fair, by James Forbes; Declassee, by
Zoe Aikins; Jane Clegg, by St John Ervine; The jest, by Sem Benelli;
Wedding bells, by Salisbury Field; Mamma’s affair, by Rachel Barton
Butler; Adam and Eva, by George Middleton and Guy Bolton; Clarence, by
Booth Tarkington. The volume opens with “The season in review” by Mr
Mantle and the year book at the close includes surveys of the season
in London and in Paris, along with statistical summaries and other
data relating to the stage.
* * * * *
“As to at least five of the ten, there will be general acquiescence in
Mr Mantle’s choice, and as to the other five there will be general
diversity of opinion.” Brander Matthews
+ =N Y Times= p4 Ja 30 ’21 360w
“Friends of the drama in America owe Mr Mantle a real debt of thanks.”
Dorothy Grafly
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p5a Ja 30 ’21 400w
“Altogether a much-needed piece of work, and well done. If the next
time Mr Mantle will include some account of the significant
achievements in stage-craft, his year-book will prove even more
valuable.”
+ =Theatre Arts Magazine= 5:85 Ja ’21 230w
=MANUEL, HERSCHEL THURMAN.= Talent in drawing; an experimental study of
the use of tests to discover special ability. (School and home education
monographs) $1.25 Public-school 136.7
20–4546
Account of a pioneer investigation in the province of specialized
ability, or talent, conducted by Professor Whipple, Miss Genevieve L.
Coy, and Dr T. S. Henry among selected public school pupils and
college students of Urbana, Illinois. The problem the investigators
set before them was to discover “the essential psychophysical
characteristics of persons talented in drawing,” and to learn how the
test methods could best be used in the diagnosis of such talent. To
the individuals selected were given certain tests of: general
intelligence; higher thought processes; memory and learning; reading;
observation; sensory discrimination; handwriting and drawing; also
physical and motor tests. Tests given were taken from Binet-Simon,
Whipple, Thurstone and other authorities. The investigation,
completely described in this little volume, together with a list of
the tests, and a bibliography of books used, “resulted in a somewhat
detailed statement of the nature of talent in drawing and has yielded
a tentative program of tests for the measurement of this talent.”
(Conclusion)
=MAPU, ABRAHAM.= Sorrows of Noma. il *$1.50 (1½c) National bk.
publishers, 200 5th av., N.Y.
20–4891
A translation, by Joseph Marymont of the Hebrew historical romance,
“Ahavath Zion,” the first novel that appeared in Hebrew literature.
The story, beginning with sinister treachery and deceptions, and a
bitter tragedy, centers about the motive so often recurring in the
great Greek narratives—that of a noble son hidden away from evil
intrigues of enemies, and raised in rural simplicity as a lowly born
shepherd. In this case there is also a mother falsely accused by her
husband’s enemies, and a beautiful daughter. The finding of the lad
Ammon by an exalted lord’s only daughter, his restoration to his
birthright both of nobility and property, the vindication of his
mother Noma from false accusations, the inevitable punishment of the
followers of iniquity, the loves of Ammon and his sister, are
interwoven with a picture of the city of Zion during the reign of
Ahaz, and the austere fear of God and love of nation inextricable from
any conception of the ancient Hebrew.
* * * * *
“The story is well told in language borrowed for the most part from
the Old Testament, and the manners and customs of the Jewish people
are well described.”
+ =Cath World= 111:544 Jl ’20 60w
“As a contribution to the cause of acquainting the world with Hebraic
literature, ‘Sorrows of Noma’ comes as a valuable addition. But aside
from the literary and classical considerations there is still a third
value to this book. The human interest of it.” Rose Karsner
+ =N Y Call= p10 My 9 ’20 430w
=MARBLE, ANNIE RUSSELL (MRS CHARLES FRANCIS MARBLE).= Women who came in
the Mayflower. $1.50 (13½c) Pilgrim press 974.4
20–8510
“This little book is intended as a memorial to the women who came in
the Mayflower, and their comrades who came later in the Ann and the
Fortune.... There is no attempt to make a genealogical study of any
family. The effort is to reveal glimpses of the communal life during
1621–1623. This is supplemented by a few silhouettes of individual
matrons and maidens.” (Foreword) Contents: Endurance and adventure;
The voyage and landing; Communal and family life in Plymouth
1621–1623; Matrons and maidens who came in the “Mayflower”: Companions
who arrived in the “Fortune” and the “Ann.” Index.
* * * * *
+ =Bib World= 54:552 S ’20 200w
“A very attractive little volume. It is well worth reading.” W. A.
Dyer
+ =Bookm= 52:125 O ’20 60w
“Full of pleasant gossip about the Mayflower folks is this little
volume.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p8 Je 5 ’20 300w
=N Y Times= 25:5 Jl 25 ’20 180w
“Within its limits it is extremely comprehensive, and well worth
reading.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p10 Je 2 ’20 300w
=MARCH, NORAH HELENA.= Towards racial health. *$2 (2c) Dutton 612.6
19–15994
A book on sex hygiene and sex instruction designed for parents,
teachers and social workers. It is an English work and is brought out
in America with an introduction by Dr Evangeline W. Young of Boston,
in addition to the original foreword by J. Arthur Thomson of the
University of Aberdeen. The subjects covered include: The physical
development of the child; The mental and emotional development of the
child; Care of children; Supervision—psychological aspect; Nature
study in the service of sex instruction; Further aids towards
understanding the biology of sex; Ethical training; Education for
parenthood (two chapters); Social safeguarding. Other important matter
is presented in appendices, including suggested ways of answering
children’s questions. There is a bibliography of seven pages and an
index.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 16:290 My ’20
“The soundness of the author’s biological background is attested by
Professor J. Arthur Thomson’s commendatory foreword, while her
willingness to deal with delicate practical difficulties betrays the
sympathetic understanding and intimate personal knowledge of the
teacher.”
+ =Dial= 67:274 S 20 ’19 60w
“What Miss March has done is well done—her chapters are poorly named,
however. The American edition would be improved if statistics from
American institutions and organizations were added.” E. M. Achilles
+ − =J Philos= 17:192 Mr 25 ’20 320w
“The author exhibits a singular ignorance of the ways of real boys and
girls and is to be credited with an extensive knowledge of the
literature of the subject.” H. C. M.
− + =School R= 28:159 F ’20 140w
“It is an unusually successful attempt in this difficult field.” L. B.
+ =Survey= 43:438 Ja 17 ’20 130w
=MARCHANT, JAMES=, ed.[2] Control of parenthood. *$2.50 (5½c) Putnam 176
20–21358
Arguments for and against birth control are presented in this volume,
to which distinguished men and women of Great Britain contribute. The
Bishop of Birmingham writes the introduction. J. Arthur Thomson and
Leonard Hill write of Biological aspects; Dean Inge and Harold Cox of
Economic aspects; Dr Mary Scharlieb, Dr F. B. Meyer and Dr A. E.
Garvie of Social and religious aspects; and Sir Rider Haggard and Dr
Marie C. Stopes of Imperial and racial aspects.
=MARCOSSON, ISAAC FREDERICK.= Adventures in interviewing. il *$4 (4c)
Lane 920
20–645
The book, the author tells us, grew out of a series of articles
dealing with war-time interviewing. He believes in making a record of
people and events while they are alive and when the interest in them
is keenest and he has met many of the commanding figures of the day.
He introduces the reader to them both by word and picture. All the
most prominent contemporary journalists, statesmen, military men,
novelists and actors pass review along with the history of the
launching of many a popular book and touches of personal friendships
with the author. The contents are: Watterson and the early days; New
York and the world’s work; A great American editor; The art of
interviewing; Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt; The real Lloyd
George; Northcliffe, the king-maker; Haig and other British notables;
Kerensky and the revolution-makers; Pershing and Wood; Foch and
Clemenceau; The Wall street sphinxes; Some literary friendships; Other
literary associations; The story of “The jungle”; Plays and players.
There are sixty-one illustrations and an index.
* * * * *
+ =Ath= p751 Je 4 ’20 120w
+ =Booklist= 16:167 F ’20
Reviewed by A. B. Maurice
+ =Bookm= 50:562 F ’20 1550w
“Mr Marcosson’s book is good reading for the general reader and a good
text book for young writers and young newspaper men.” J. C.
+ =Boston Transcript= p10 F 7 ’20 440w
=Nation= 110:559 Ap 24 ’20 260w
“This is a rarely readable volume. It is also excellently illustrated;
the photographs with which its pages are generously adorned are
exceedingly well reproduced, and the volume takes on value, therefore,
as a popular portrait gallery.”
+ − =N Y Times= 25:26 Ja 18 ’20 1200w
“It is packed with big personalities described in a most entertaining
way by a man who has a genius for interviewing and has had rare
opportunities for its exercise.”
+ =Outlook= 124:161 Ja 28 ’20 50w
“The style is already familiar to hosts of readers—popular, fluent,
rapid, pointed, occasionally showing irritating haste and
carelessness, yet never losing the good journalist’s knack of telling
his story interestingly and vividly.” E. M. Brown
+ − =Pub W= 97:181 Ja 17 ’20 220w
“A book of many limitations. Mr Marcosson is not even an observer, he
sees only the most obvious features in a man’s face and the most
conspicuous qualities in his mind. Nevertheless his book is
interesting. He sees little, but he sees clearly; and, again, he
writes barbarously, but he writes clearly.”
+ − =Review= 2:135 F 7 ’20 360w
“Mr Marcosson seems to have been especially fortunate in his
intimacies with writers.”
+ =R of Rs= 61:333 Mr ’20 120w
“Unfortunately, Mr Marcosson has not the gift of revealing his
personality in his writing, nor do any of the famous men whom he
describes emerge from his pages bright and clear-limned. His book,
indeed, is a pedestrian piece of work. But though its sole interest
lies in the various subjects presented to the reader, that interest is
substantial and well recompenses one for the momentary boredom
produced by certain appallingly vapid statements.”
+ − =Sat R= 129:589 Je 26 ’20 650w
“A bright, racy and interesting account of interviews with a host of
notables. From start to finish the personal pronoun ‘I’ looms up with
great frequency. This detracts much from the delightfulness of the
book.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p10 Ja 23 ’20 260w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p305 My 13 ’20 150w
=MARDEN, ORISON SWETT.= You can, but will you? (Marden inspirational
books) *1.75 (1c) Crowell 170
20–9415
A collection of the author’s essays on right living. Among the
subjects are: The new philosophy of life; The new idea of God; Facing
life the right way; Winning out in middle life; How to realize your
ambition; The web of fate; The open door; Do you carry victory in your
face?
=MARKHAM, EDWIN.= Gates of paradise, and other poems. *$1.75 Doubleday
811
20–7451
This is Edwin Markham’s fourth volume of verse. It is made up of short
poems arranged in eight groups: Van-couriers; At my lady’s window;
Wings for the spirit; Deeper chords; Finger-posts for the highway;
Echoes from the world war; Memorable men; Songs to the supernal woman.
There is a frontispiece portrait of the author.
* * * * *
+ − =Booklist= 17:22 O ’20
“Is, at its best, rhymed moralizing: eloquent, sincere, restrained,
but withal too absorbed in immediate domestic and sociological
interests to touch the deepest mysteries of the heart of man.” R. M.
Weaver
+ − =Bookm= 51:453 Je ’20 100w
“‘Gates of paradise’ is pleasant for its simple yet technically
capable lines only. The thought contained therein is as old and
hackneyed as ham and eggs for breakfast. If he is not careful the
mantle of Ella Wheeler Wilcox will descend upon him.” H. S. Gorman
− + =N Y Times= 25:18 Jl 25 ’20 150w
Reviewed by O. W. Firkins
=Review= 3:653 D 29 ’20 420w
=MARSHALL, ARCHIBALD.= Many Junes. *$2 (2c) Dodd
20–6431
Something stronger than himself had always dominated over Hugh
Lelacheur even from infancy. First it was a strong-willed father that
interfered with his destiny at the death of his mother. Later a too
well disciplined reasonableness always triumphed over his strongest
desires to make him give up what he liked best for the second best.
The best things came too late and kept his life a lonely one with few
high lights and many shadows. The shadow’s turn into bitterness and a
hardening of the heart when on a memorable June day, given over to
memory and a reliving of his past life, it comes to him that he could
offer his unloved wife a measure of spiritual companionship, as the
only remaining second best thing that he had so far withheld.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 16:313 Je ’20
“Reaching us twelve years after its first appearance in England. ‘Many
Junes’ reveals the constant quality of Mr Marshall’s genius. It might
as well have been written yesterday, as far as internal evidence
discloses. To ‘Many Junes,’ therefore, we may turn for the reading of
a novel in its writer’s best and most characteristic manner.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p4 Ap 21 ’20 1200w
“Archibald Marshall has told the story pleasantly and neatly enough to
hold one’s interest; and yet he fortunately does not make one take the
book seriously enough to object to some of the incredibilities in the
plot.” J. C. L.
+ =New Repub= 22:428 My 26 ’20 220w
“Mr Marshall’s new novel is something of a departure from his
customary type of fiction. This new book is in a different vein, one
more serious and more sorrowful.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:204 Ap 25 ’20 1100w
“The present novel has the same attractiveness with the exception that
it lacks that pervading humor which made some of Mr Marshall’s earlier
books so delightful.”
+ − =Outlook= 125:280 Je 9 ’20 240w
“‘Many Junes’ is a rambling, disjointed series or sequence of episodes
in the life of an extremely disagreeable Englishman. Hugh Lelacheur is
a prig, a snob, and an egotist.” H. W. Boynton
− + =Review= 3:709 Jl 7 ’20 250w
“The characters all are vividly portrayed flesh-and-blood people.
Altogether the story is admirably conceived and developed, and will
afford agreeable entertainment to Mr Marshall’s readers.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11a My 16 ’20 600w
=MARSHALL, ARCHIBALD.= Peggy in Toyland. il *$2.50 Dodd
20–18754
A story about a little English girl and her two favorite dolls, one of
them made of wood, one a very handsome person known as Lady Grace.
There is a teddy bear too, and one night in her dreams the three of
them conduct Peggy to Toyland where she has many strange adventures.
* * * * *
“The illustrations have the charm of the narrative; a child would like
both story and pictures.”
+ =Ind= 104:376 D 11 ’20 50w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p10 D 17 ’20 80w
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p836 D 9 ’20 170w
=MARSHALL, ARCHIBALD.= Spring walk in Provence. il *$3.50 (4½c) Dodd
914.4
20–17745
The original preface to this book is dated August, 1914, but events
immediately following that date delayed its publication. In an added
word the author says: “I have been over the manuscript again and made
a few alterations here and there, but have altered nothing that shows
it to have been written five years ago.” Among the chapter titles are:
Hills and olives; Flowers and scents; In old Provence; Aix; Les baux;
Mistral; Saint-Remy; Avignon; The palace of the popes; Vaucluse;
Villeneuve-sur-Avignon; Arles. There are illustrations and an index.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:111 D ’20
“A volume of finished excellence, written without affectation, but
with due regard for the stateliness of English prose.” Margaret Ashmun
+ =Bookm= 52:344 D ’20 80w
“Mr Marshall’s journeyings through Provence inspire us with a desire
to follow his footsteps.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 O 2 ’20 1350w
“The accompanying photographs are good.”
+ =N Y Evening Post= p30 O 23 ’20 120w
“Mr Marshall has produced a book that is interesting and quietly
entertaining, but it is not one that will add to his reputation as a
writer of finished prose. The book bears the marks of hasty
composition, of a haste that has resulted in an occasional
slovenliness and a frequent awkwardness of expression.”
+ − =N Y Times= p18 D 26 ’20 720w
=MARSHALL, EDISON.= Voice of the pack. il *$1.75 (2½c) Little
20–26323
Dan Failing, the grandson of a frontiersman, has spent all his life in
cities. In his twenty-ninth year he finds that he is far gone with
tuberculosis and is told that he has but six months to live. He feels
a yearning toward the mountain country he has never known except
through his grandfather’s stories and he goes out to the Cascades. An
old mountaineer who remembers the elder Failing takes him into his
home, altho he cannot conceal his disappointment in this weak
descendant of a mighty man. But Dan wins his host’s respect almost at
once, for he is a natural born woodsman. He regains his health and
later wins the love of Lennox’s daughter, a girl called Snowbird.
There is much of forest and animal lore in the story.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 16:245 Ap ’20
“Again and again Mr Marshall leaves his commonplace style to indulge
in some really good writing, but as often he returns to the dull
monotone.”
− + =Boston Transcript= p10 My 1 ’20 260w
“The story in the main is merely a woodsman’s idyl, rich in poetic
fancy—although stern in its fidelity to the truth as that woodsman
sees it—and throbbing with reverent love for nature.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:326 Je 20 ’20 700w
“Mr Marshall’s story runs close to nature’s heart. Thru a most
engrossing and intimate presentation of forest life, develops a fine
love drama.” Joseph Mosher
+ =Pub W= 97:1288 Ap 17 ’20 220w
=MARSHALL, F. HENRY.=[2] Discovery in Greek lands. il *$3.40 Macmillan
913.38
“Mr Marshall has written an attractive sketch of the chief results
attained by excavations in Greater Greece since 1870. He treats the
subject historically, starting with the age of Knossos and Mycenae,
and describing under each period the main sites examined. He gives
special chapters to temples, to the famous centres like Delphi and
Olympia, and to isolated discoveries like the Sidon sarcophagi or the
fine statues dredged up near Cerigotto in 1900–1.”—Spec
* * * * *
“Though so highly compressed as to be little more than a skeleton
review, his narrative is not without interest. The illustrations that
accompany the text add much to its value.”
+ =N Y Evening Post= p12 D 31 ’20 160w
“He provides a useful bibliography and a number of good photographs.
As an introduction to a large and fascinating subject, the book is
much to be commended.”
+ =Spec= 124:245 Ag 21 ’20 100w
=MARSHALL, ROBERT.= Enchanted golf clubs. il *$1 (3½c) Stokes
20–3577
At the war office he was “Major the Honourable John William Wentworth
Gore, 1st Royal light hussars”; to his friends: “There goes good old
Jacky Gore, the finest sportsman living!” But he despises golf. The
beautiful American widow, Katherine Clendenin Gunter, with a fortune
of £2,000,000 sterling, is an enthusiastic golfer. To win her he
decides to play a match with a golf champion and enters into a compact
with the ghost of a cardinal to use his enchanted clubs. With the
ghost’s aid he wins the game, but not the lady.
* * * * *
“Of course what the author describes in his shallow plot could not
take place, for the book is admittedly a burlesque. But as a burlesque
it is too extravagant to be funny.”
− =Springf’d Republican= p11a Mr 7 ’20 60w
=MARTIN, EDWARD SANFORD.= Life of Joseph Hodges Choate. 2v il *$10
Scribner
20–21406
“The reader will promptly discover that this life of Mr Choate is not
so much a biography after the manner of Plutarch as a compilation. The
chief contributor, by far, is Mr Choate himself, whose writings,
public and private, make up four-fifths, or more, of the book.”
(Introd.) The first volume opens with Mr Choate’s own story of his
boyhood and youth, a fragment of autobiography dictated by him in 1914
while convalescing from an illness. The editor says further, “I have
borrowed—whenever it could be done to advantage—from newspapers,
commentators, and eulogists. A series of scrap-books, kept for forty
odd years and covering more or less Mr Choate’s experiences as
ambassador, supplemented the long series of letters which could be
drawn upon.” Volume 1 covers the period to the nineties. Volume 2
covers the years of ambassadorship to England and the period of the
war, closing with a review of his life. There are interesting
illustrations and an index.
* * * * *
“It is a difficult task to cover adequately the many-sidedness of such
a man in a biography unless it is systematic and well rounded. The
career of Mr Choate merits such a biography. It has not yet been
written. When it is, Mr Martin’s interesting and richly filled volumes
will be the biographer’s chief source book.” S. L. Cook
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 N 20 ’20 1450w
“The two volumes are a new thing in biography. They will constitute a
classic in editing.”
+ =N Y Times= p6 N 14 ’20 1700w
“This is an ideal method of combining biography with autobiography.”
R. R. Bowker
+ =Pub W= 98:1884 D 18 ’20 300w
=MARTIN, EVERETT DEAN.= Behavior of crowds; a psychological study. *$2
Harper 301
20–20958
The book is somewhat of a critical enlargement on Le Bon’s “The
crowd.” Its conclusions are based on the latest research in analytical
psychology originated by Freud. The author holds that “as a practical
problem, the habit of crowd-making is daily becoming a more serious
menace to civilization. Events are making it more and more clear that,
pressing as are certain economic questions, the forces which threaten
society are really psychological.” (Foreword) As a remedy to this
menace he suggests re-education along the lines of humanism expounded
by such writers as James, Schiller, Dewey and others. Contents: The
crowd and the social problem of today; How crowds are formed; The
crowd and the unconscious; The egoism of the crowd-mind; The crowd a
creature of hate; The absolutism of the crowd-mind; The psychology of
revolutionary crowds; The fruits of revolution—new crowd-tyrannies for
old; Freedom and government by crowds; Education as a possible cure
for crowd-thinking; Index.
=MARTIN, GEORGE (MADDEN) (MRS ATTWOOD R. MARTIN).= Children in the mist.
*$1.75 (3c) Appleton
20–11222
In a series of eight sketches the writer, who has lived with the negro
in Mississippi, in Louisiana, in Florida, the Carolinas and Kentucky,
shows him as he is, neither praising him as his over-zealous advocate,
nor indulging in race hatred. It is an arraignment of the white race
for keeping this primitive people so long in confusion, discouragement
and ignorance. The stories cover the period from the emancipation to
the present and are arranged in chronological order. The stories are:
The flight; The blue handkerchief; An Inskip niggah; Pom; The sleeping
sickness; Fire from heaven; Malviney; Sixty years after.
* * * * *
“The stories are very readable.”
+ =Booklist= 17:72 N ’20
“The eight stories in this book are written with a commendable
intention, but that intention does not after all extend beyond a
limited field and a circumscribed aspect of the negro.” W. S. B.
+ − =Boston Transcript= p7 S 8 ’20 600w
“Unfortunately, while Mrs Martin writes with the authoritative manner
of one who has known the black man intimately, she has, as she
concedes, laid no emphasis in her tales upon negroes who have, to use
her phrase, forged ahead. The result is an obvious struggle between
the complacence which comes of having met coloured people as servants
chiefly, and the feeling that it is inconsistent to deny them
opportunity and to charge their race with the consequences.” H. J. S.
+ − =Freeman= 2:190 N 3 ’20 210w
“Mrs Martin avoids both sentiment and indignation; her tone is warm
but quiet; she lets the stern implications arise in their bare and
tragic force.”
+ =Nation= 111:276 S 4 ’20 350w
“They are typical of the kind of studied work in short-story writing
which carefully applies principles of preparation, suspense,
contributing effect, and climax, and never achieves the dynamic
impulsion and the artistic inevitability of a directly told
unpremeditated tale.”
+ − =N Y Evening Post= p20 O 23 ’20 360w
“This book will prove her to have advanced in her art. Mrs Martin is
too good an artist to let the purpose obtrude itself. It is there,
none the less, and it gives her book a permanent value aside from its
quality as fiction.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ =N Y Times= p24 O 3 ’20 1550w
=Outlook= 125:647 Ag 11 ’20 60w
“A broad vein of humor runs through the tales, but invariably there is
a serious note at the ending.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p5a Ja 23 ’21 140w
=Wis Lib Bul= 16:195 N ’20 80w
=MARTIN, HELEN REIMENSNYDER (MRS FREDERIC C. MARTIN).= Schoolmaster of
Hessville. *$1.90 (3c) Doubleday
20–16342
The schoolmaster of Hessville, a Pennsylvania Dutch village, was John
Wimmer, fine and strong of character but with the cravings of youth in
his young body. It was flesh calling to flesh that made him love
Irene, the glowing beauty with the coarse instincts. She played cat
and mouse with him and her wiles were finally responsible for John’s
marriage to Minnie, Irene’s opposite. Minnie’s winsomeness never quite
compensated John for Irene’s more sensuous charms and when a cruel
accident deprives Minnie of her reason leaving John with two
motherless children on his hands, the now, on her part, widowed Irene,
offers her services as housekeeper and becomes John’s mistress. He has
fallen an easy prey but in time his eyes are opened, and when a
successful operation restores Minnie to him he blesses her breadth of
view that can condone his lapse.
* * * * *
“Not alone are the main characters well drawn, even the most minor
minion is unforgettably sketched. The author has studied children and
has thoroughly expressed her understanding of them.”
+ − =N Y Times= p27 S 12 ’20 240w
=MARTIN, MABEL WOOD.= Green god’s pavilion. *$1.90 (1½c) Stokes
20–14601
This novel of the Philippines shows in almost lurid colors the
irreconcilable difference between the East and the West. It is
symbolized in the figures of two women, one, Julie, an American of a
fair and spiritual beauty who goes out to Manila as a teacher and with
the spirit of a crusader. The other, a native woman, Isabel, the
“Empress of the East,” with the fierce passion of life that stops not
at evil. It is a tragic story of how the East breaks all who come to
her with the best of intentions of uplift and improvement, except they
miraculously rise from the dead for a second birth. It broke Julie and
left her for dead among the plague stricken huts of the natives. It
broke Barry McChord, the man with the “Excelsior” face, who fell a
victim to the plague after his high hopes were gone. But something
selfless in both finally triumphs over all self-deceptions, even over
death. Much philosophizing and much gruesome realism are a part of the
story.
* * * * *
“Smoothly written and vivid tale of love and faith and hardship.”
+ =Bookm= 52:174 O ’20 220w
“From its opening chapter, the reader’s interest is caught and held.
Amy Lowell, herself, has done no more vivid color bits than this
author has introduced in descriptions of Manila. Aside from the
brilliancy of the local setting, she has woven a tale of exceeding
interest and charm, and super-excellent quality in novels of today,
its ‘third act’ is most engrossing.” C. K. H.
+ =Boston Transcript= p4 S 4 ’20 540w
“‘The green god’s pavilion’ may hardly be termed an extraordinary
novel, for it is built too obviously for thrill purposes, but it
displays an intimate knowledge of conditions in the Philippines and
presents with frequency pictures of native life that are vivid and
finely written.”
+ =N Y Times= p10 O 10 ’20 600w
=MARTYN, WYNDHAM.= Secret of the silver car. *$1.75 Moffat
20–5579
Another book of the adventures of Anthony Trent, master criminal. In
an indiscreet moment while they were shut in a caved-in dugout in
Flanders, expecting death at any moment, Trent had told the story of
his life to his unknown and unseen companion. Both escape and with the
war over, he sets himself to find this unknown “William Smith” who
knows too much about him for his own safety. He meets “William
Smith’s” sister, falls in love with her and for her sake resolves to
give up his brilliant criminal career. In her service he goes out to
the Balkans, becomes involved in international intrigue, has many
hairbreadth escapes, but secures the papers that mean so much to Lady
Daphne’s father and is rewarded with her hand.
* * * * *
=Boston Transcript= p6 Jl 3 ’20 300w
“Nor is this book mere swashbuckling. It is written always adroitly,
sometimes humorously, and with the zest of the author’s own
enjoyment.”
+ =N Y Evening Post= p20 Ap 24 ’20 200w
Reviewed by M. K. Reely
=Pub W= 97:996 Mr 20 ’20 320w
+ =Springf’d Republican= p11a My 16 ’20 200w
=MARVIN, FRANCIS SYDNEY=, ed. Recent developments in European thought.
*$6.25 Oxford 901
20–17403
“This volume, which is a sequel to ‘The unity of western civilization’
(1915) and ‘Progress’ (1916), is, like them, the fruit of a course of
lectures given at a summer school at Woodbrooke, Birmingham. The
addresses composing it were given in August, 1919, and it traces the
idea of progress in European history since 1870. Among the
contributors, besides the editor, are Mr A. E. Taylor, who writes on
‘Philosophy,’ Dr F. B. Jevons, who writes on ‘Religion,’ Mr A. D.
Lindsay, of Balliol, whose subject is ‘Political theory,’ and Mr A.
Clutton Brock, who discusses ‘Art.’ Each article is followed by a
bibliographical note as a guide to further reading.”—The Times
[London] Lit Sup N 11 ’20
* * * * *
=Ath= p509 Ap 16 ’20 1400w
“In spite of the difficulties of handling the vast intricate masses of
still fluid material, the contributors have given readable and yet
valuable summaries of the progress of thought. For the beginner, there
could be no better introduction to the essential contributions of
man’s recent achievement.” M. J.
+ =Int J Ethics= 31:114 O ’20 460w
“Naturally, the essays by different authors vary in value. The least
satisfactory is the first, on philosophy.... The most brilliant essays
are those dealing with the fields of thought most intensively
cultivated by the last generation.... Compared with the treatment
accorded history, the studies here offered of political theory and of
economic progress are slightly disappointing.... Taken as a whole, the
cumulative impression of these various lectures is greater than that
of any one taken separately.” Preserved Smith
+ − =Nation= 111:379 O 6 ’20 1000w
“The personality of each of the twelve writers is given full
expression. It makes the diversity more interesting than the unity.”
H. W. C.
+ − =Nature= 105:607 Jl 15 ’20 500w
“The aim of the writers is to trace the progress and acquisitions of
thought and give a general picture of the results obtained by modern
knowledge; and they have succeeded in producing essays that are of a
high quality and also thoroughly readable.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p247 Ap 22 ’20 2450w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p742 N 11 ’20 110w
=MARX, MAGDELEINE.= Woman; tr. by Adele Szold Seltzer. *$1.90 (6c)
Seltzer
20–11894
A translation of a novel that is said to have created a sensation in
France. It is a record of emotional moments. The characters have no
names, no appearances. They are only personalities. The “woman” of the
story loves and marries and bears a child. While still loving her
husband she takes a lover and then loses both husband and lover in the
war. Out of these experiences she emerges invincible, with an undimmed
capacity for life and an indomitable will to live. Henri Barbusse says
in his introduction, “In no other book perhaps so markedly as in this
has the integrity of an individual been more respected, and never has
an imaginary character so consistently warded off whatever is not of
itself. You don’t even seem to feel that this ‘woman’ talks or tells a
story. You simply know what she knows.”
* * * * *
Reviewed by Theodore Maynard
− + =Bookm= 52:75 S ’20 700w
=Dial= 69:433 O ’20 70w
“To those in search of a well-written book, not to mention a
contribution to real literature, Magdeleine Marx has nothing whatever
to offer. The style is wordy, pretentious and empty, a disjointed
collection of hollow phrases embodying all the platitudes of the
so-called revolt of woman.” E. A. Boyd
− =Freeman= 2:43 S 22 ’20 960w
=Ind= 104:64 O 9 ’20 500w
“The story is frank and sincere and full of isolated perceptions that
are both searching and beautiful. But it is also thin and scrappy and
disjointed, and the complete shadowiness of all the characters robs
its theories of the inner energy of a human content. In a word, Madame
Marx has felt very deeply and reflected intensely, and those who
agreed with her passionately have taken it for granted that she has
written a great book. But that is taking for granted far too much.”
Ludwig Lewisohn
− + =Nation= 111:134 Jl 31 ’20 900w
“A very great deal of it gives the reader the impression of a mind
out-stretching itself, to the point of dislocating all its joints, in
order to perceive and express something that nobody else has ever
perceived or expressed.”
− =N Y Times= 25:25 Jl 4 ’20 850w
“The book is written in a resignedly magnanimous strain, and passages
occur, which, taken by themselves, might affect us as noble. Yet as a
whole its absence of elevation in the midst of calls to elevation is
confounding.”
− + =Review= 3:347 O 20 ’20 750w
“‘Woman,’ if nothing else, is an interesting psychological study of
the type of mind that dwells upon sex and psychoanalysis with a
neurasthenic intensity, when the world is full to overflowing with
real woman problems.” M. E. Sangster
+ − =Social Hygiene= 6:590 O ’20 260w
“It does seem to me that the book might more appropriately have been
called ‘A woman.’ For the rest, the book is perfervid in a way that we
do not quite like in America, perhaps because we are not wholly
acclimated to it. It has pages of unusual beauty, and a high degree of
unity and directness.”
+ − =World Tomorrow= 3:350 N ’20 350w
=MASEFIELD, JOHN.= Enslaved. *$2.50 Macmillan 821
20–13322
The long narrative poem of the title depicts courage born of love and
begetting the brotherhood of man even in the untamed. A fair damsel is
carried off by a pirate galley into the captivity of a khalif’s harem.
Her lover follows into slavery to rescue her. He does so with the aid
of a brother slave who must kill a traitor to accomplish their
purpose. Recaptured and brought before the khalif they are set free
because their tale causes human stirrings in the hawk breast of the
latter. The other poems are: The hounds of hell; Cap on head; Sonnets;
The passing strange; Animula; The Lemmings; Forget; On growing old;
Lyric.
* * * * *
+ =Ath= p718 My 28 ’20 60w
“It seems to us that Mr Masefield’s first business is to regain
control of his words; and that he can only do this by deliberately
attempting a subject that bristles with psychological nuances, and
insisting that his language shall accommodate itself to them.
Otherwise we fear he will never succeed in expressing that elusive
beauty which he sees, but which at present comes to us only in
assertion or in fitful gleams through the interstices of an opaque
style.” J. M. M.
+ − =Ath= p823 Je 25 ’20 2300w
+ =Booklist= 17:22 O ’20
“Mr Masefield is the single poet writing in English today who both in
popular esteem and by the most exacting critical estimate legitimately
belongs to the august line of poets who are among the chief glories of
our race: to his greatness no journalistic cavil can add or take
away.” R. M. Weaver
+ =Bookm= 52:65 S ’20 240w
“In this poem, [On growing old], as in so many aspects of the other
poems in this volume, one feels the shadows of the world, deepened by
the tumult of war, settling upon the radiance of a brave visionary
spirit. The thrill, the excitement, the adventures of living are all
now subdued to this key of sadness, in which the passion and beauty
that was once a flame becomes an effable glow.” W. S. B.
+ − =Boston Transcript= p6 Ag 18 ’20 2400w
“The whole thing seems bookish, remote, unreal. The characters do not
become sufficiently interesting: seem, in fact, insufficiently
equipped with a back-ground of flesh and blood experience.” J: G.
Fletcher
− + =Freeman= 2:163 O 27 ’20 1050w
“One of the signs that the times are good in English poetry is the
fact that Mr Masefield keeps on writing poems which tell stories.”
Mark Van Doren
+ − =Nation= 111:sup670 D 8 ’20 310w
“In his latest volume there are some serious offenses against rhyming,
euphony, and scansion, but in the larger aspects, in the essential
substance and indescribable quality of authentic poesy, he is more
richly endowed than any other living writer.” Lawrence Mason
+ =New Repub= 23:340 Ag 18 ’20 1250w
“‘Enslaved,’ his latest book of poems, offers a peculiarly fine view
of Masefield in all his variety. There is no poet in England, unless
we except Hardy, who possesses keener insight into the hearts of men.
It is this attitude toward life, this same fatalism that recognizes
the worst, yet sees the best behind, that makes John Masefield one of
the finest living figures in the whole field of English poetry.”
+ =N Y Times= 25:1 Jl 11 ’20 2450w
“A volume which reveals anew the amazing power and versatility of that
English poet.”
+ =Outlook= 127:68 Ja 12 ’21 450w
“‘Enslaved’ is a dramatic adventure tale. But ‘Enslaved’ is likewise a
dreamy, semi-lyrical, murmurous, and caressing tale. It is
Masefieldian in its power to be both these things at once.” O. W.
Firkins
+ =Review= 3:317 O 13 ’20 600w
“The book is extraordinarily rich, for it contains beside others,
‘Forget’ and ‘On growing old,’ two of the most beautiful poems that Mr
Masefield ever wrote, and in this age of singers Mr Masefield remains
our poet of greatest achievements.”
+ =Spec= 124:765 Je 5 ’20 500w
=MASEFIELD, JOHN.=[2] Right Royal. *$1.75 Macmillan 821
20–18954
“In ‘Right Royal’ Mr Masefield celebrates in a narrative poem the
story of a horse-race. The story of Mr Masefield’s poem is that of a
horse with great points and virtues, for speed and endurance, but very
undependable, having lost a number of races by going panicky from
fear. He was bought by Charles Cothill, who believed that all his
potential qualities as a winner could be developed. Cothill backed his
own horse to the extent of all his possessions, which created a crisis
in his love for the woman he hoped to marry. If he lost, his love was
lost. In fact, it was win all or lose all.”—Boston Transcript
* * * * *
“It will be acknowledged that the preliminaries of the race, the
discussions in the stables, the professional tips and omens, the
catalogue of the entries, are sandy soil for the growth of poetry. The
best of the poem has no relation to the worst; the worst might have
been sacrificed. Even in the best are imperfections, but we have
learnt to swallow Mr Masefield’s longer poems without straining at the
gnats.” E. B.
+ − =Ath= p692 N 19 ’20 600w
+ =Booklist= 17:146 Ja ’21
“It is growing very trite to say that Mr Masefield does this thing or
that thing better than any contemporary poet. He does the things that
nobody else does and is thus in competition with himself. ‘Right
Royal’ may not be as fine a poem as ‘Enslaved,’ but no one can dispute
that it is the best narrative of a horse-race that has been written by
any modern poet.” W: S. Braithwaite
+ =Boston Transcript= p5 N 20 ’20 1500w
“‘Right Royal’ is a bad poem, both intrinsically and because it fails
to satisfy certain necessary expectations. It promised to be as good
as ‘Reynard the fox,’ but it is woefully, incredibly worse.” Mark Van
Doren
− + =Nation= 111:sup670 D 8 ’20 240w
Reviewed by W. B. D. Henderson
+ =N Y Evening Post= p2 N 20 ’20 1650w
Reviewed by R: Le Gallienne
+ =N Y Times= p17 D 26 ’20 1700w
“The feeling that ‘Right Royal’ deserves to be placed below the
earlier volume [‘Reynard the fox’] may be purely a matter of
individual temperament on the part of the reviewer. In any case, it is
a volume which occupies an enviable place in the field of modern
poetry.”
+ =Outlook= 127:68 Ja 12 ’21 120w
Reviewed by G: D. Procter
+ =Pub W= 98:1893 D 18 ’20 320w
“The weather—cloud, sun, wind, and shower—is given more prominence and
is better conceived in ‘Right Royal’; but to balance this, the
unsuccessful passages are decidedly worse than those in ‘Reynard the
fox.’ Another fault it seems to the present writer to possess, which
the incomparable ‘Reynard the fox’ does not: it is a little
monotonous. As a ‘galloping poem,’ however, it is certainly one of the
best in English.”
+ − =Spec= 125:675 N 20 ’20 1200w
“He piles simile on simile and each simile is beautiful in itself,
each is a patch of ornament stuck on, not woven into the fabric. Mr
Masefield has told a brave tale bravely. If his courage had been like
Right Royal’s, he would have dared to leave undecorated the beauty
inherent in the tale.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p734 N 11 ’20 1050w
=MASON, ALFRED EDWARD WOODLEY.= Summons. *$2 (2c) Doran
20–18656
Harry Luttrell had a strong sense of military honor and of the
necessity for self-discipline. The first drove him to join the army,
the second to tear himself away from the woman he loved and accept a
post in Egypt. His friend and classmate, Martin Hillyard, had had a
chequered career: as a sailor; in a three years’ struggle for
existence in the port-towns of Spain; as an Oxford student and
successful playwright; and during the war his knowledge of Spain
serves him in good stead as a secret service agent. Stella Croyle,
Luttrell’s one-time love, in his absence eats her heart out in
neurotic, undisciplined longing and occasionally has recourse to the
comfort of drugs. While on a leave of absence during the war, Luttrell
meets Stella again without experiencing the old-time thrill and at the
same time he meets and falls in love with Joan Whitworth. Poor Stella
commits suicide under circumstances that throw suspicion on Joan.
Through his experiences in the secret service, Hillyard is enabled to
clear Joan and smooth the way for her and Luttrell.
* * * * *
“An interesting variant of the modern detective story.”
+ =Booklist= 17:159 Ja ’21
“It is a splendid story which Mr Mason has written, based upon his
experiences in the war, full of dramatic vigor—a real novel in every
sense of the word—and permeated with the atmosphere of England, Spain,
and Egypt.”
+ =Bookm= 52:368 D ’20 90w
“This novel is an excellent substitute for a modern detective story.
Instead of possessing a single, unified plot it is composed of a
rosary of minor plots which endows it with somewhat of the character
of real life.”
+ =N Y Evening Post= p21 O 23 ’20 250w
“One cannot help wishing that the important character of Joan
Whitworth were less exaggerated and more likable, for she does more
than a little to harm the book, but it is easy to forgive this
shortcoming when one remembers Martin Hillyard and the picturesque
José Medina, the very amusing Sir Chichester Splay, Millie, and
several others among the varied figures depicted on Mr Mason’s richly
colored canvas.”
+ − =N Y Times= p24 O 10 ’20 660w
“Mr Mason, here as always, has an exciting and unusual story to
unfold. This novel is hardly the equal of the ‘Four feathers’ or ‘The
broken road,’ for the author attempts to ming a not very successful
humorous vein with his natural plot-and-action type of fiction
writing.”
+ − =Outlook= 126:470 N 10 ’20 60w
“The touch of melodrama in the last section of the book is well
conceived and exciting. The best piece of writing in the book is the
description of the night passed by Martin Hillyard on the shore of a
river in the Sudan. This vivid picture of the life of the game-hunter
in wild countries affords a striking contrast to the sophisticated
chapters at the beginning of the book.”
+ − =Spec= 125:539 O 23 ’20 470w
“Mr Mason has shown better form than this.”
− =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p683 O 21 20 650w
=MASON, ARTHUR.= Flying bo’sun. *$1.75 (4c) Holt
20–19236
The narrative, the author claims, is of his own experience. It tells
of the voyage of a sailing schooner from San Francisco to the Fiji
Islands, of the superstitious sailors’ taking alarm at the alighting
on the ship of the “flying bo’sun,” the bird of bad omen, the
subsequent death of the captain, his haunting of the cabin and
spiritualistic rappings. On the return voyage the Hindoo stowaway has
a mysterious illness and is left in a state of coma on the captain’s
bed while a terrific hurricane is raging. During a critical moment,
when all seems lost, the frail little Hindoo is suddenly seen in
charge of the wheel giving commands in the captain’s voice with the
captain’s ghost standing beside him. With the ship safe and calm
restored the Hindoo is found just coming to life on the captain’s bed.
He disclaims all knowledge of commanding a ship but is still shaken by
the memory of the hideous dream he has had.
* * * * *
“The feeling persists that, with the exception of the spiritual
phenomenon, the whole dramatic voyage actually occurred.” S. M. R.
+ =Bookm= 52:371 D ’20 90w
“As a story of the sea it ranks with the best of Jack London or Morgan
Robertson, and as a story of the uncanny it is comparable with
‘Dracula’ and ‘The master of Ballantrae.’”
+ =N Y Evening Post= p22 O 23 ’20 200w
“In spite of the undoubted accuracy of Mr Mason’s idiom, however, the
discriminating layman is likely to find less of the authentic or
communicable essence of the sea in ‘The flying b’sun’ than in the
spiritual reaction of Masefield, Conrad, Tomlinson and McFee.”
+ − =N Y Times= p25 Ja 16 ’21 340w
=MASON, AUGUSTUS LYNCH.= Guiding principles for American voters. *$2
Bobbs 320
20–18679
“Mr Mason aims this ‘handbook of Americanism’ chiefly at the newly
enfranchised women and at the young men about to cast their first
vote. He analyzes the make-up of the government and argues for what he
aptly calls a ‘re-dedication to those principles which have made
America great’—i.e., a conservative application of the underlying
ideas of the Constitution. He objects to radical methods of taxation,
to too much government ownership, governmental price fixing, etc., and
he sees ‘Socialism’ as a menace.”—N Y Evening Post
* * * * *
“His arguments are cogently presented and supported by carefully
examined data: an excellent brief for the preservation of a
conservative republic rather than a radical democracy.”
+ =N Y Evening Post= p11 O 30 ’20 100w
“Its purpose is to popularize an argument, and it has no other value.”
− =Springf’d Republican= p8 N 9 ’20 50w
=MASON, WILLIAM LESLEY.= How to become an office stenographer. (Just how
ser.) il $1.50 Pitman 652
20–26543
“A handy book intended for the untrained shorthand student who is
ambitious to secure a good position without previous experience.”
(Title page) The book is adapted for use as a text in business schools
and in high school commercial departments. There are thirteen
chapters, entitled: Your attention, please! “Safety first”; What
business men expect of a stenographer; Preparedness; Your “busy” day;
Taking the business letter; Transcribing the business letter; Typing
the business letter; Typing business forms; The use and care of the
typewriter; Words: their use and abuse; Filing letters; Time-saving
office appliances. There are two appendixes giving postal regulations
and information regarding the civil service.
* * * * *
=Booklist= 16:303 Je ’20
=MASSENET, JULES ÈMILE FRÉDÉRIC.= My recollections. il *$3 Small
19–15403
“An autobiography telling the story of this modern French musical
leader’s career, and especially of his many works. [It is] translated,
by express desire of the author, by his friend H. Villiers Barnett.
Illustrated.”—Brooklyn
* * * * *
“Will be enjoyed by the average reader as well as the opera-goer and
student of music.”
+ =Booklist= 16:79 D ’19
Reviewed by H: T. Finck
=Bookm= 51:171 Ap ’20 180w
“A charming autobiography.”
+ =Brooklyn= 12:68 Ja ’20 40w
“His narrative, like his music, reveals facility, grace, and charm,
and is alternately gay and sentimental to the point of pathos. One is
not very much wiser after reading the book, but one closes it with a
certain regret at parting from such amiable company.” Henrietta Straus
+ − =Nation= 111:76 Jl 17 ’20 190w
Reviewed by Lawrence Gilman
=Yale R n s= 9:872 Jl ’20 1100w
=MASSEY, MRS BEATRICE (LARNED).= It might have been worse. *$1.75 (6½c)
Wagner, Harr 917.3
20–4452
An account of a motor trip from coast to coast taken in the summer of
1919, with notes on roads, hotels, and other matters of interest to
travelers. Contents: The start; New York to Pittsburgh; Ohio and
detours; On to Chicago; Through the dairy country; Clothes, luggage,
and the car; The Twin cities and ten thousand lakes; Millions of
grasshoppers; The Bad lands; The dust of Montana; A wonderland;
Westward ho! Nevada and the desert; The end of the road.
=MASSINGHAM, HAROLD JOHN.= Letters to X. *$2.50 Dutton 824
20–26887
“In ‘Letters to X,’ H. J. Massingham discourses on a great many phases
of modern life and literature. There is hardly a modern English author
of any consequence who does not come under the appraisement of his
pen.”—Springf’d Republican
* * * * *
“The book contains many excellences of detail, and reaches at times
and maintains for a while a level notably above its average.
Perspective is perhaps Mr Massingham’s outstanding quality.” F. W. S.
+ − =Ath= p110 Ja 23 ’20 950w
“Familiar, rambling essays of a book lover that will please the
‘gentle reader’ with like leanings, particularly if he be fond of the
Elizabethans and Carolines. Their exclusive bookishness will make them
seem cold and remote to others.”
+ − =Booklist= 17:62 N ’20
Reviewed by S. P. Sherman
=Bookm= 52:108 O ’20 1950w
“These are essays of rare quality in which the essayist is writing
continuously of the alliance between literature and life.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p7 Jl 17 ’20 1100w
“Mr Massingham’s essays are delivered ex-cathedra and in a style both
heavy and dense. He is a lover of dust covered books, but he seems
widely read rather than discriminating, and though he ranges all the
way from Richard de Bury’s ‘Philobiblon’ to John Gould Fletcher, he
hardly does much to illuminate the names which he mentions. He
declares many enthusiasms but lacks the gift of differentiation.”
− + =Nation= 111:162 Ag 7 ’20 180w
“It is a pity that Mr Massingham has chosen to hide this wise, witty,
companionably learned and most comforting book under the bushel of a
title which not only gives no hint of its quality, but is actually dry
and forbidding. Of the value of good literature, of the qualities
which constitute it and of the laws of its making, he says some of the
wisest, most pertinent, things written in a long day.” R: Le Gallienne
+ =N Y Times= p7 Ag 8 ’20 2650w
“The word which fits his style exactly is one of the best adjectives
in our language which the language is guilty of criminal negligence in
permitting itself gradually to lose—the word ‘lusty.’ If it were dead
instead of merely decaying, it might be recalled to life by the easy,
careless, rushing vigor of Mr Massingham’s undaunted prose.”
+ − =Review= 3:172 Ag 25 ’20 360w
“Mr Massingham’s attacks on his own age, sharp, dipped in bitterness,
aimed with truth though they are, do not really touch the monster. Bad
though the age may be, he is too impatient and petulant with it; and
he is divided in his desires.”
+ − =Sat R= 129:232 Mr 6 ’20 1050w
=Springf’d Republican= p8 Jl 10 ’20 40w
“Treating his work as art, susceptible to form, even in the rather
strained sense of that word which he adopts, we find it deficient in
that very quality, and especially in that element of form,
tranquillity, upon which he so insists.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p30 Ja 15 ’20 1300w
=MASSINGHAM, HAROLD JOHN=, ed. Treasury of seventeenth century English
verse, from the death of Shakespeare to the Restoration (1616–1660).
(Golden treasury ser.) il *$1.50 Macmillan 821.08
(Eng ed 20–10754)
“Mr Massingham has marked out as his claim the most characteristic
part of the century in time, and has not excluded any kind except the
dramatic. Most of his selections are naturally lyrical, but by no
means all; and he has thus been able to find room for at least
specimen fruits from the half-wilderness gardens of ‘Pharonnida’ and
‘Cupid and Psyche.’ He has also cast his gathering net unusually wide,
and his readers will make acquaintance with authors who will pretty
certainly be new to them, such as Thomas Fettiplace and Robert
Gomersal. In giving uniform modern spelling throughout Mr Massingham
may invite censure from some purists, but certainly not in this place.
Whatever may be the case earlier, the printers’ spelling of the
mid-seventeenth century is, as he justly says, ‘only externally
archaic.’ Half its differences from present use are not uniform and
are evidently haphazard. One may not perhaps approve quite so heartily
his practice of excluding some beautiful things as ‘too well known.’
The authors are alphabetically arranged.”—Ath
* * * * *
Reviewed by G: Saintsbury
+ =Ath= p40 Ja 9 ’20 1400w
“A fresh, provocative, beautiful little book. Palgrave’s volume was
not a bit better gauged for Palgrave’s time than Mr Massingham’s is
for ours. The purest twentieth-century principles are in operation
here. Mr Massingham’s notes are lively to the end, though often they
are cleverly irrelevant and gloriously slap-dash. It is as if Mr
Saintsbury were twenty again.”
+ =Nation= 110:151 Ja 31 ’20 370w
“The completeness of the book makes it an excellent compendium for any
one studying that era, although it is to be feared that many a general
reader will be frightfully bored by the stiff artificiality that marks
many of the poems, especially after they get past the Elizabethan
era.” H. S. Gorman
+ − =N Y Times= 25:21 Jl 25 ’20 170w
“The poems, as a whole, are excellently chosen, and the enthusiasm of
the introduction makes pleasant reading. The notes, with their short
biographical summaries, are especially valuable. But it needs a
certain type of mind to appreciate seventeenth century literature, and
if all readers are not stirred to the same joy in it as Mr Massingham,
it is not his fault, but that of the period.”
+ =Sat R= 129:39 Ja 10 ’20 480w
“Mr Massingham’s introduction is a delightful essay written in a style
that has caught something of the curious felicity of the poets in
whose work he has steeped himself.”
+ =Spec= 124:212 F 14 ’20 1000w
“He claims, and with justice, that the ordinary reader will find here
a whole body of poetry with which he has never before had the chance
of making acquaintance. This is a service for which the student of
English poetry will be heartily grateful to Mr Massingham. But if he
be a lover as well as student he will probably find it hard to keep
down some irritation at an anthologist who sets out with the resolve
to give him as few as possible of the poems which he is known to
like.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p129 F 26 ’20 3400w
=MASTERS, EDGAR LEE.= Domesday book. *$4.50 Macmillan 811
20–19678
In this volume Mr Masters has told a long story in verse. The body of
Elenor Murray is found by the river near Starved Rock in Illinois and
the coroner, William Merival, sets out to assemble the evidence, the
material evidence from the man who finds the body, the doctor who
performs the autopsy and the spiritual evidence from those who had
known the girl from her birth or her parents before her. The effect of
these testimonies brought together is to throw light on the many-sided
character of one human being when all secrets are laid bare and to
show how one life, however humble or pitiful, affects countless other
lives, its influence radiating like ripples in a pool when a stone is
dropped.
* * * * *
“If Masters can rid himself of his oracular airs and the bad
Browning-Shakespeare patois with which he wearies his staunchest
admirers, there are few limits to his possible achievements. ‘Domesday
book’ is too diffuse and prosy to be a masterpiece of poetic fiction,
but it contains the seeds and strength—and the hope—of one.” L:
Untermeyer
+ − =Bookm= 52:363 Ja ’21 550w
“The great American poem of the war has come in the ‘Domesday book’
and come from the hand of the poet who laid the foundation in the
synoptic Americanism of the ‘Spoon river anthology.’ The latter was a
great work; ‘Domesday book’ is greater.... ‘Domesday book’ is a great
national topic of America’s soul symbolized in the character of Elenor
Murray.” W: S. Braithwaite
+ =Boston Transcript= p7 D 4 ’20 1900w
“The trouble with ‘Domesday book’ is chiefly that it thins this raw
material out until it becomes hopelessly prosaic. The realism of
‘Spoon river’ had the virtue of selection and of epigram. In his
latest work, Mr Masters has become extensive without any corresponding
enlargement of the imagination and the power behind his broader
canvas.” O. M. Sayler
− + =Freeman= 2:357 D 22 ’20 600w
“The total effect is often crude and heavy, now pretentious, now
hopelessly flat; and yet beneath these uncompleted surfaces are the
sinews of enormous power, a greedy gusto for life, a wide imaginative
experience, an abundance of the veritable stuff of existence—all this,
and yet not an authentic masterpiece. ‘Spoon river anthology’ still
has no rival from the hand of its creator.” C. V. D.
+ − =Nation= 111:566 N 17 ’20 470w
“For all its largeness of intention, all its vitality and
forcefulness, ‘Domesday book’ is not, to my mind, finally articulated.
It seems to me unfinished. I do not mean that the poem is not brought
to a conclusion. It is concluded, and, I believe, appropriately
concluded. But it has parts that should have been cut away or have
been more wrought over.” Padraic Colum
+ − =New Repub= 25:148 D 29 ’20 1700w
“It could have been produced nowhere but in America and nowhere so
justly as in the Middle West. The epigrammatic compactness of ‘Spoon
river anthology’ is lacking in it, but it takes on a huge strength
that the former book lacked.” H. S. Gorman
+ =N Y Times= p18 Ja 16 ’21 840w
“If there be any one who does not clearly realize that life is
infinitely complex, that it is in the last analysis practically
impossible to assign responsibility for evil, that much good may be
where convention sees only evil ... if there be any one who is not
convinced of these things already or cannot learn them from his own
observations and the daily papers, he may derive great benefit from
reading Mr Masters’ book. But those to whom these things are
commonplaces will perhaps not care to wade through the poem.”
− + =No Am= 213:286 F ’21 900w
“The Edgar Lee Masters, whose ‘Spoon river anthology’ blazed a new
trail thru American literature, returns with ‘Domesday book.’ Perhaps
he is less sardonic now, but the vision of ‘Domesday book’ is broader
and it is, happily, gently suffused with a very human tolerance and
forgiveness.” G: D. Proctor
+ =Pub W= 98:1894 D 18 ’20 430w
“The first part is very interesting, and the whole book is readable.
Its essence is prosaic, though a back door is left open through which
poetry can let herself in in a neighborly fashion, if she chooses. Her
visits are infrequent.” O. W. Firkins
+ − =Review= 4:15 Ja 5 ’21 1350w
=MASTERS, EDGAR LEE.= Mitch Miller. il *$3.50 Macmillan
20–17009
Mitch Miller’s story is told by his friend Skeeters Kirby. It is a
story of boys and a boy’s town written for adults. Mitch has read “Tom
Sawyer” and Tom is to him a living personality. The two boys hunt for
buried treasure and try to repeat all of Tom’s exploits. They dig for
treasure in Old Salem where Lincoln lived, and an old man who knew
Lincoln talks to them of a different kind of treasure. They run away
intending to visit Tom Sawyer but are brought back home. Later their
fathers take them on a journey to Hannibal, Missouri, where they meet
life’s first disillusionment. Mitch is something of a dreamer and a
poet. He is killed stealing rides on the cars, and in the epilogue,
written thirty years after, the author can say that he is now glad
that his chum did not live to face the shattered idealism of the
present day.
* * * * *
+ =Booklist= 17:72 N ’20
“The best boy’s story in our generation of American authors has been
written by Mr Masters in ‘Mitch Miller.’” W: S. Braithwaite
+ =Boston Transcript= p5 O 9 ’20 1500w
“Those who have neatly ticketed Mr Edgar Lee Masters as a cynic will
be obliged after reading ‘Mitch Miller,’ to change their label—if they
must have labels. There is, to be sure, a sub-acid quality in the
epilogue. But the mood of the book is one of dedication rather than of
challenge. Its tone is sunny and fresh and sweet; its beauty quiet and
unobtrusive. ‘Mitch Miller’ comes close to being a masterpiece with
its breadth of interpretation, and the fineness and singleness of its
mood. It is complete, even to the tragedy at the end.” C. M. R.
+ =Freeman= 2:214 N 10 ’20 250w
“The narrative is tangled in a snarl of moods. Its movement is often
thick, its wings gummed and heavy. Only in flashes does the powerful
imagination of Mr Masters shake itself free and burn with the high,
hot light which so often glows in the ‘Anthology.’ There are touches
of admirable comedy and strong strokes of character and some racy
prose; but as a whole ‘Mitch Miller’ falls regrettably between the
clear energy which might have made it popular and the profound
significance which might have made it great.” C. V. D.
+ − =Nation= 111:566 N 17 ’20 480w
“If fidelity to nature were the whole of art, Mitch Miller would be a
perfect book, or almost perfect.... The defect in the author’s method
comes out in the end of the book.... Is there nothing in American life
significant and interesting enough to make it worth while for a boy
like Mitch to grow up? Perhaps there is not; but if that is true, it
is an artistic problem to be faced, not evaded through a petulant
dismantling of a stage well set.” Alvin Johnson
+ − =New Repub= 24:276 N 10 ’20 1250w
“Mr Masters’s novel is put down with mingled feelings. It has many
faults, but it has quite as many virtues. There is so much to the book
that it leaps into the mind to advise the author to write novels
henceforth and forevermore and let poetry rest.”
+ − =N Y Times= p20 N 7 ’20 980w
“The book is unusual and captivating.”
+ =Outlook= 126:600 D 1 ’20 80w
“We are in the habit of looking to Mr Masters for clear-cut character
drawing and for sympathetic, if sometimes ironic, understanding of the
motives of men but we have often felt regretfully, that he seemed to
be too much interested in the morbid side of human nature. ‘Mitch
Miller’ comes as a grateful answer to that doubt.” Marguerite Fellows
+ =Pub W= 98:1192 O 16 ’20 300w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson
=Review= 3:447 N 10 ’20 630w
+ =Wis Lib Bul= 16:238 D ’20 70w
=MASTERS, EDGAR LEE.= Starved Rock. *$1.75 Macmillan 811
19–17050
For descriptive note see Annual for 1919.
* * * * *
“Perhaps the poet’s first worthy successor of ‘Spoon River’; but while
displaying something of its sardonic spirit the present collection is
of far wider range.”
+ =Booklist= 16:162 F ’20
“He is at his ripest and surest in such mordant and merciless analyses
as Lord Byron to Doctor Polidori, The barber of Sepo. They’d never
know me now, Oh you Sabbatarians! and that profound disquisition on
Poe, Washington hospital. And the man who wrote Sagamore Hill, that
incomparable portrait of Theodore Roosevelt; who wrote Chicago and I
shall go down into this land, manifests an intimate understanding of
the American heart at its noblest.” H: A. Lappin
+ =Bookm= 51:216 Ap ’20 250w
+ =Cleveland= p86 O ’20 20w
“In ‘Starved Rock’ there is little music but much food for thought.”
+ =Ind= 104:165 O 9 ’20 40w
“It is beginning to be apparent that Mr Masters neither can nor needs
to depart from his original tone and method. He cannot do so
profitably and there is no need, since the vein which served them
seems inexhaustible. There are not lacking here the old familiar notes
of sour, practical tragedy, of hoarse, heroic scepticism, of good,
round, pagan, Chicago fleshliness. But [the reader] is sorry for a
certain strenuous complacency which has been growing in Mr Masters
over a considerable period and which is particularly objectionable in
the present volume.”
+ − =Nation= 110:557 Ap 24 ’20 550w
“Unfortunately, Mr Masters frequently fails to sing because he fails
to simplify. He is a thinker, first of all, and the thinker is
naturally more discursive than the singer. And now a word for the best
of the book. It is a poem about Roosevelt, called At Sagamore Hill.
Here is a poem which has in it truth, dignity, vision, vitality.”
Marguerite Wilkinson
+ − =N Y Times= 25:4 Mr 7 ’20 1100w
“In ‘Starved Rock,’ the reader will not starve, though he will
scarcely feast. There are the usual monologues, of which only two are
slimy. There are bulky and hazy philosophies, cosmicisms, idealisms,
feeble sedatives for bitter griefs. There is an excellent bit of
journalism, self-described in the title, Sagamore Hill. There are
landscapes of an alluring but unsatisfying picturesqueness. There are
instances of that lyric pliancy and invitation which surprise the ear
among the ruder notes of Mr Masters, and there are rare moments of
true inspiration.” O. W. Firkins
+ − =Review= 2:519 My 15 ’20 650w
“Mr Masters is the same versatile narrator who builds poems of facts
rather than of fancies, and who presents carefully analyzed characters
and situations in a cold, direct and fearless way. He is still at his
best as an analyst or narrator, and he is still unsatisfactory and
unconvincing when he wanders from matter-of-fact or satirical verse.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p10 F 20 ’20 850w
=MATHEWS, BASIL JOSEPH.= Argonauts of faith: the adventures of the
“Mayflower” Pilgrims. il *$1.50 Doran 974.4
20–10629
In this book for boys and girls, with a foreword by Viscount Bryce,
there is a prologue comparing the embarking of the Pilgrims on their
quest for liberty to the ancient Argonauts’ quest of the Golden
fleece. The epilogue suggests that the Pilgrim fathers had their
counterparts in the heroes of “Pilgrim’s progress,” and that they
laid the keel for a new Argo—the ship of state of a new
commonwealth. The stories told are: On the great north road: The
stormy passage; The land of threatening waters; The house with the
green door; The ship of adventure; The adventures of scouting; A
clearing in the waste; Builders in the waste; Greatheart, Mr
Standfast, and Valiant-for-truth. There are a chronology, an index,
illustrations and maps.
* * * * *
“The story is so well told that it is a pity not to have had it
accurate in details.”
+ − =Bib World= 54:645 N ’20 190w
+ =Booklist= 17:37 O ’20
“Follows history with admirable care, presents an excellent
atmosphere, and tells an absorbing story.” W. H. Dyer
+ =Bookm= 52:126 O ’20 60w
“Of all the books relating to the Pilgrims, ‘The argonauts of faith’
by Basil Mathews has the best dramatic form and the most suggestive
content for the story-teller, teacher, or librarian.” A. C. Moore
+ =Bookm= 52:261 N ’20 100w
“It is a very readable account and the impression it leaves is an
accurate one.”
+ =Ind= 104:242 N 13 ’20 140w
+ =Lit D= p96 D 4 ’20 50w
Reviewed by Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ =N Y Times= p9 D 19 ’20 60w
+ =Outlook= 125:507 Jl 14 ’20 40w
“Basil Mathews has written an old story in an interesting way.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p9a Ag 15 ’20 180w
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p242 Ap 15 ’20 80w
=MATHEWS, BASIL JOSEPH=, ed. Essays on vocation. *$1.75 Oxford 174
“The purpose is to inculcate the importance of vocation as
distinguished from mere profession or making one’s living, and the
spirit of the book is ethical and idealistic. One of the essays,
Vocation in art, by H. Walford Davies, is an inspiring piece of
literature. The other essays are: Vocation and the ministry, by Edward
Shillito; Vocation in law, by Sir E. Pollock; Vocation in the home, by
Emily E. Whimster; Commerce as a vocation, by W. H. Somervell;
Vocation in industry, by A. Ramage; Vocation in education, by J. Lewis
Paton; The career of an elementary school teacher, by Fanny Street;
and Sir William Osler’s Vocation in medicine and nursing.”—Ath
* * * * *
=Ath= p1081 O 24 ’19 100w
“As one might expect, a book of essays on vocation edited by Mr Basil
Mathews, with contributions by such people as Mr Edward Shillito, Mr
Lewis Paton and Sir William Osler could hardly be anything but good.
But a good book on vocation is not good enough. It should possess,
especially at such a time as this, a certain prophetic quality. It
ought to be constraining, irresistible. But this is just what Mr
Mathews’s book is not.” R: Roberts
+ − =Freeman= 2:236 N 17 ’20 840w
=MATURIN, EDITH (CECIL-PORCH) (MRS FRED MATURIN).= Rachel comforted.
*$2.50 Dodd 134
20–16938
The authenticity and truthfulness of these “conversations of a mother
in the dark with her child in the light” (Sub-title) are vouched for
in a preface by W. T. Stead and a note by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The
conversations between the author and her dead son were carried on by
means of a planchette over a period of years and the mother asserts
that she retired from the world and gave up herself, her health and
her life to them and that the one essential condition for such
communications are a perfect love on both sides. The object of the
book is to comfort other bereaved parents.
* * * * *
=Ath= p589 Ap 30 ’20 60w
+ =Boston Transcript= p7 O 23 ’20 420w
− =Springf’d Republican= p7a N 28 ’20 220w
=MAUGHAM, REGINALD CHARLES FULKE.= Republic of Liberia. il *$6.50
Scribner 916.6
20–26544
“The author, Mr Maugham, knows much of Africa, has written on Africa,
and, when he completed in 1918 the pages which are now published, he
had had for some years personal experience of life in Liberia as
British consul-general at Monrovia. He deals with Liberia from all
aspects, with its geography, history, administration and institutions,
its climate, races, birds and beasts, plants and trees. The words and
the music of the Liberian national anthem are supplied, and a very
clear account by a practised pen is made more attractive by a number
of excellent illustrations and an adequate map.”—The Times [London]
Lit Sup
* * * * *
+ =Ath= p431 Mr 26 ’20 80w
+ =Booklist= 16:308 Je ’20
“His study of Liberia tries on the one hand to say pleasant things
concerning Liberia, and on the other hand to show British merchants
that now and here is their chance to exploit a rich land.” W. E. B.
DuBois
− =Nation= 111:350 S 25 ’20 330w
“All through the book Mr Maugham gives evidence of genuine sympathy
and understanding for the Liberians and their problems.”
+ =N Y Times= p6 O 10 ’20 660w
“An excellent account of Liberia.”
+ =Spec= 124:248 F 21 ’20 180w
“This is a timely, interesting and valuable work, giving a fairly
complete description of the Negro republic. It is written in a
kindlier tone than has sometimes been employed by other writers on the
country.” I. C. Hannah
+ =Survey= 44:310 My 29 ’20 320w
“Of this republic the present book tells us all that is to be told,
and tells it well. Owing to difficulties and delay in publication, the
book is a little complicated by two prefaces, and the editing or
revision has not been immaculate. But, taken as a whole, it is a most
interesting and informing book.”
+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p132 F 26 ’20 1450w
=MAUGHAM, WILLIAM SOMERSET.= Land of the Blessed Virgin. il *$2.50 (5c)
Knopf 914.6
A20–1263
In this book the author gives his recollections of Andalusia in a
series of sketches—the land ablaze with sunshine, opulent with
luminous soft color, with cities bathed in light, desolate wastes of
sand, dwarf palms and the flower of the broom. The character of the
country he finds typified in the paintings of Murillo and the colors
of his palette—“rich, hot, and deep”—the typical colors of Andalusia.
Some of the sketches are: The churches of Ronda; Medinat Az-Zahrā; The
mosque; Cordova; Seville; The Alcazar; Women of Andalusia; The dance;
A feast day; Before the bull-fight; Corrida de Toros; Granada; The
Alhambra; The song.
* * * * *
“Its objective descriptions are full of rich and vivid color, its
travellers’ tales are intimate and charming and its records of the
impressions made upon the mind of the author, though not without
touches of affectation, are so individual as to be far more
interesting than most chronicles.”
+ =Booklist= 17:27 O ’20
“If the reader of ‘The land of the blessed virgin’ is not anxious to
visit Andalusia after reading these pages he is impervious to the
picturesqueness of the scene and to the rare qualities of Mr Maugham’s
style.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ag 4 ’20 1300w
+ =Freeman= 2:165 O 27 ’20 340w
+ =N Y Times= p24 Ag 22 ’20 650w
=MAUGHAM, WILLIAM SOMERSET.= Mrs Craddock. *$1.90 (2½c) Doran
20–26573
This is one of Mr Maugham’s earlier stories now first brought out in
America. It is a story with one central interest, one woman’s
passionate love for a man, its change to hate and gradual cooling to
indifference. Bertha Ley, of Court Leys, falls rapturously in love
with a handsome young tenant farmer on her estate and marries him in
the face of his lukewarm response and the disapproval of everyone
else. She is mistress of her own fortune and has but one relative, a
keen-minded acerbic aunt who believes in standing aside and letting
others follow their own courses. Bertha gives everything into Edward’s
hands and Edward proves a model English squire. But as he rises in
county estimation, Bertha’s love for him wanes and her abject devotion
gives place to distaste. She leaves him, has a brief love affair with
a quite different type of man, and comes home again to settle into a
state of apathy and indifference from which his death, under the very
circumstances she had once imagined with such poignant pain, does not
rouse her.
* * * * *
“An unusual character study.”
+ =Booklist= 16:349 Jl ’20
“The merits of ‘Mrs Craddock’ as a story are no less than its high
qualities as a character study, and it should have been offered to
American readers long ago.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Je 16 ’20 1000w
“It has some subtlety, but moves rather heavily and joylessly.”
+ − =Outlook= 125:507 Jl 14 ’20 20w
=MAULE, MARY KATHERINE (FINIGAN) (MRS JOHN P. MAULE).= Prairie-schooner
princess. il *$1.75 (2c) Lothrop
20–15508
A story of the crossing of the plains and the settlement of Nebraska.
The Peniman family, Quakers from Ohio, are going west in a prairie
schooner when fate throws little Nina Carroll into their hands. Her
father has been killed by an Indian arrow but there is reason to
believe that it was a white man not an Indian who was responsible.
Valuable papers relating to the little girl are stolen and nothing can
be learned of her family connections. She is adopted by the Penimans,
altho they know that she has enemies who for some reason wish to gain
possession of her. Because of their Quaker principles they treat the
Indians with kindness and justice and at several crises in the story
they are rewarded by the timely aid of their Indian friends. The
children grow up, the boys take part in the Civil war, the mystery in
Nina’s story is cleared away and Nina and Joe Peniman and two other
pairs of young people set up new homes in the prairie state.
* * * * *
“This story of the West has all the atmosphere of the region it
describes—that is to say, it is flat, monotonous, and dry.”
− =N Y Evening Post= p20 O 23 ’20 60w
=MAUROIS, ANDRÉ.= Silence of Colonel Bramble. *$1.25 (3½c) Lane
20–4463
This light-hearted war book is an interpretation of English, Irish and
Scotch character from the point of view of a witty Frenchman. During
the war the author acted as interpreter with a Scotch division, a
position occupied by Aurelle in his story. It is composed largely of a
series of mess-room conversations in which the different characters
are allowed to reveal themselves. The translation is by Thurfrida
Wake, with translations of Aurelle’s occasional verses by Wilfrid
Jackson. The originals of these verses are given in an appendix.
* * * * *
“The humour of the story is somewhat less enjoyable in the translation
than in the original; but the reader is still able to appreciate the
incisive delineation of the gallant officer who fills the title-rôle.”
+ =Ath= p832 Ag 29 ’19 100w
+ =Booklist= 16:245 Ap ’20
=Bookm= 51:443 Je ’20 30w
“The volume is interesting for its portrayal of the way a Frenchman
sees the English race.”
+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Je 16 ’20 480w
“Those who have been the guests of British officers at the various
staff and brigade headquarters will recognize every scene and every
character in the pages of this book. It is distinctly a man’s book—a
trifle risqué at times from a Puritanic point of view, but always
witty and artistically delicate.” F: T. Hill
+ =N Y Times= 25:208 Ap 25 ’20 800w
“‘The silence of Colonel Bramble’ is the wittiest book of comment on
warfare and our national prejudices that we have yet seen. The
rendering now published is well done on the whole, but it cannot equal
the original.”
+ =Sat R= 128:226 S 6 ’19 850w
“No more sympathetic, and at the same time penetrating, appreciation
of British character has appeared than this modest collection of
sketches, which, by the way, include passages of unexpected tenderness
and restrained power.”
+ =Spec= 123:771 D 6 ’19 1350w
=MAXSON, CHARLES HARTSHORN.= Great awakening in the middle colonies.
*$1.25 Univ. of Chicago press 277
20–7587
A study of the religious revival of 1740 as it affected the middle
colonies, supplementing Tracy’s “Great awakening,” (1842) which dealt
mainly with New England. Writing so many years later the author found
himself “more in sympathy than was common in Tracy’s day with the
catholicity of Whitefield and with the democratic tendencies of the
revival which were so largely responsible for the destruction of the
ecclesiastical system of New England.” (Preface) Contents:
Introduction, and pietism in Pennsylvania; Frelinghuysen, and the
beginning of the revival among the Dutch Reformed; The Tennents, and
the beginning of the revival among the Presbyterians; George
Whitefield, and his alliance with the New Brunswick Presbyterians; The
year 1740, the great awakening at high tide; The schism in the
Presbyterian church in the year 1741; Period of expansion and
organization; Whitefield the pacificator; Triumphant evangelism in an
age of unbelief; Conclusion; Bibliography (seven pages).
* * * * *
Reviewed by F. A. Christie
+ − =Am Hist R= 26:105 O ’20 730w
“This little book is a worthy treatment of a most interesting and
important movement.”
+ =Mississippi Valley Hist R= 7:160 S ’20 250w
=MAXWELL, DONALD.=[2] Last crusade. il *$7.50 Lane 940.356
20–20028
“With 100 sketches in colour, monochrome and line made by the author
in the autumn and winter of 1918, when sent on duty to Palestine by
the admiralty for the Imperial war museum” reads the informing
sub-title of this book. The author further informs us that hostilities
were over when he reached his destination and he had to hurry up with
his pictures and get over the ground as quickly as possible. He thus
obtained glimpses of things and places from every point of view
without rhyme or reason and found, in sorting out his drawings, that
he was much better off than he would have been with more leisure. The
pictures with his diary and explanatory notes make the story of the
“Last crusade.” The contents are: Over old roads; Pisgah Heights; The
streets of Askelon; Chariots of iron; Abana and Pharpar; The glory of
Lebanon; The coasts of Tyre and Sidon; Sea-plane ships; The gates of
Gaza; Armageddon; The valley of death; In terra pax.
=MAXWELL, WILLIAM BABINGTON.= For better, for worse (Eng title, Remedy
against sin). *$2 (1c) Dodd
20–8240
A story based on the injustice of the English divorce law. Feeling
herself unloved and unwanted in her own home, Claire Gilmour marries
Roderick Vaughan. She knows nothing of marriage and the feeling of
admiration and affection which she had confused with love quickly
dies. Roddy is a spendthrift and a brute. He squanders all of Claire’s
fortune he can lay his hands on and bullies her into giving him more
by threatening to take her child from her. She endures every
indignity, but the members of her family, who had disapproved of the
marriage, are set absolutely against divorce. Roddy goes to America
and Claire learns the meaning of peace. He returns and consents to a
divorce, but withdraws his consent when Claire inherits money and
brings a counter charge of infidelity against her, quite false but
easily proved true in court. Roddy and Claire are both declared
unfaithful and hence forced to live in wedlock. Claire takes the one
way open and goes away with the man who loves her and whose career has
been ruined by the divorce scandal.
* * * * *
“The author who sets out deliberately to write a novel with a purpose
must content himself with being a little less than an artist, a little
more than a preacher. In ‘A remedy against sin’ Mr W. B. Maxwell has
chosen to obscure his talents under a wig and gown that he may deliver
a tremendous attack against the monstrous injustice of our present
divorce laws. Up to a certain point we must admit that ‘A remedy
against sin’ is a great deal better than the majority of novels.” K.
M.
+ − =Ath= p543 Ap 23 ’20 780w
“The end is one that few novelists would have the courage to record,
but it is a logical end, although it is not one that readers who seek
for a novel with a ‘high moral purpose’ will approve. But since Mr
Maxwell is writing the truth about life, he has made convincing the
culmination of the tragic tale of the marriage of Roderick Vaughan and
Claire Gilmour.” E. F. E.
+ =Boston Transcript= p4 O 6 ’20 1300w
“One of the strongest pleas ever made against the existing law in
England. As a work of art the novel suffers little from the evident
propaganda, because of the clearness of characterization, and the
gradual working out of an inevitable crisis in an intolerable
situation.”
+ =Ind= 104:384 D 11 ’20 130w
“One thing about this new novel cannot, in view of its subject, be too
strongly emphasized, and that one thing is this: it is absolutely
clean. Admirable in its construction, sane and realistic in its
development, intensely interesting from beginning to end, this new
novel by W. B. Maxwell is a thoughtful, conscientious and notable
book, a book worthy of the man who wrote ‘In cotton wool’ and ‘Mrs
Thompson.’”
+ =N Y Times= p22 S 26 ’20 1100w
“A more moving fiction character than Claire is not often drawn—and
all the more so that the author refrains from forcing the note of
pathos. There are a few passages in the book that may offend taste by
their baldness of statement, but the impact and purport of the novel
are the reverse of immoral.”
+ =Outlook= 126:333 O 20 ’20 150w
“The character drawing is vivid and satiric. As in other books of Mr
Maxwell, the tale unfolds with flawless logic—it has the inevitability
of a Greek tragedy.”
+ =Pub W= 98:1193 O 16 ’20 300w
“Mr Maxwell’s novel with a purpose is entirely free from that
suspicion of dullness which, not always with justice, attaches to this
type of fiction.”
+ − =Sat R= 129:393 Ap 24 ’20 540w
“The story is told at great length and with considerable attention to
detail, but it is difficult to feel great interest in the heroine,
whose anæmic personality pervades the whole atmosphere of the book and
increases its dreariness.”
− + =Spec= 124:798 Je 12 ’20 120w
“The narrative is well handled—related with force and yet with
restraint. The book will, perhaps, excite more curiosity than
corrective resolution. But it is at least reasonably lifelike and
convincing.”
+ =Springf’d Republican= p9a O 31 ’20 300w
=MAXWELL, WILLIAM BABINGTON.= Glamour (Eng title, Man and his lesson).
*$1.75 Bobbs
20–3060
“The hero of this story is a writer of popular plays who, after being
jilted by a very prominent beauty in favour of a duke, marries a more
common-place young woman, with whom he is exceedingly content.
Unfortunately his old love whistles him back, and his fall so preys on
his mind that he is about to commit suicide, when the war breaks out,
and he reflects that the enemy can probably ‘do the business’ as
expeditiously as he himself. His final redemption of character and his
wife’s forgiveness are effectively described.”—Spec
* * * * *
=Ath= p948 S 26 ’19 900w
=Booklist= 16:282 My ’20
=Boston Transcript= p8 Mr 10 ’20 1450w
=Lit D= p120 Ap 17 ’20 2050w
“It is a good and satisfying book, full of the stuff of life,
beautifully told.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ =N Y Times= 25:1 F 29 ’20 1100w
“Not a new story, you surmise, only the eternal triangle. But Maxwell
has seen it from a new angle.” Katharine Oliver
+ =Pub W= 97:601 F 21 ’20 360w
=Spec= 123:478 O 11 ’19 90w
“Mr Maxwell presents his characters with an imaginative intensity and
emotional fidelity that win the reader’s sympathy with them in their
dilemmas.”
+ − =Springf’d Republican= p11a Mr 21 ’20 320w
“In this latter part of the story there are some fine descriptions of
phases of the Somme battles; moreover, the change in Bryan from
selfishness to altruism and nobility of outlook merging into
war-weariness and a more wholesome selfishness, is excellently given.”
+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p484 S 11 ’19 650w
=MAYNARD, THEODORE=, comp. Tankard of ale; an anthology of drinking
songs. *$1.75 McBride 821.08
20–18409
In his introduction the author bewails the triumph of the teetotaller
and the fact that “perfect social reform casteth out conviviality.”
“In this book,” he says, “I have tried to offer to my readers
practically the whole cream of our convivial songs. But ... I tried to
omit everything that was not English in its spirit and in its
authorship.... I have compromised to the extent of admitting poems by
Scotsmen and Irishmen, while excluding their work when in dialect....
There are some good American drinking songs, but a prohibitionist
nation does not deserve to be represented in the jolliest book in the
world.” Only a few modern songs have been included, for the author
holds that they lack spontaneity and appear to have been written out
of pleasant affectation or in order to point a moral. There is an
index of first lines.
* * * * *
=Ath= p1385 D 19 ’19 180w
=Booklist= 17:62 N ’20
=Cath World= 112:406 D ’20 120w
“The collection is sufficiently comprehensive and sufficiently gay for
all practical and abstemious purposes.” L. B.
+ =Freeman= 2:21 S 15 ’20 260w
+ =Nation= 111:278 S 4 ’20 60w
Reviewed by B: de Casseres
+ =N Y Times= p7 S 19 ’20 800w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson
=Review= 3:229 S 15 ’20 150w
+ =Spec= 122:116 Ja 24 ’20 200w
=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p699 N 27 ’19 80w
=MAYO, KATHERINE.= “That damn Y”: a record of overseas service. il
*$3.50 (2½c) Houghton 940.47
20–9934
Katherine Mayo, originally prejudiced against the Y. M. C. A., went to
France, so she says, on these terms: as a free agent, paying her own
expenses, and only receiving from the Y. M. C. A. the right to wear
its uniform and to examine its records. Her manuscript was not
submitted to any member of the Y. M. C. A. for criticism or approval.
The title she has given it she considers a disguised tribute: “They
both wanted and expected to find the Y everywhere.... So, as naturally
as breathing, always and all the time: ‘Where’s that damn Y?’” She
renders a high tribute to Edward Clark Carter, “the head and shaper of
the whole Y effort overseas.” The chapters giving her impressions
include: The point of view; The key man; Christmas with the A. E. F.;
The post exchange; Hot water, by gosh! Never dare judge; The way the
people’s money goes; How can we thank them? Contributing facts. There
are an index and two appendices: A. Partial lists of overseas Y
secretaries killed and disabled in service and decorations and
citations; B. Financial statement.
* * * * *
“A very timely and readable book.”
+ =Booklist= 16:340 Jl ’20
“The fullest, completest and most interesting account of Y. M. C. A.
activities which has yet appeared.”
+ =Ind= 104:69 O 9 ’20 320w
“She tells her stories remarkably, with a crisp, dramatic style and
with vivid, forceful words. The judicial quality is not often found
mated in books with fire and force and vividness, but Miss Mayo has
achieved their commingling, in most of her work, with very great
success.”
+ − =N Y Times= 25:9 Je 27 ’20 2600w
“Miss Mayo’s narrative is of many-sided interest; in style it is both
sprightly and intense; it expresses deep feeling and at the same time
shows an extraordinary grasp of facts, figures, situations. Every
sentence, stinging, appealing or probative, makes its impression.”