I American Authors
Her Country, by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews (Charles Scribner’s Sons). In this short story by Mrs. Andrews there is a fine emotional quality, and the spiritual values, though nowhere overstressed, will remind the reader of “The Perfect Tribute,” which still remains Mrs. Andrews’ best story. Written to assist the last Liberty Bond campaign, its significant interest is independent of its timeliness.
In the Midst of Life and Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce (Boni & Liveright). To an Englishman, the lack of familiarity we show with Ambrose Bierce’s stories is a mystery. If he were asked to mention our foremost short story writers, he would think of Poe, Hawthorne, Harte, O. Henry, and Bierce. Yet the name of Ambrose Bierce is almost unknown in this country. His publishers are to be congratulated on the critical acumen that prompted them to reissue Bierce’s stories in a new popular edition. No writer, with the possible exceptions of Stephen Crane and Henri Barbusse, has written of war with more passionate vividness. Such stories as “The Horseman in the Sky,” “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” and “Chickamauga” are among the best stories ever written by an American, and in the field of the macabre Bierce at his best is very nearly the equal of Poe. I suppose that “In the Midst of Life” is the better volume, but “Can Such Things Be?” almost rivals it in interest.
Helen of Troy, and Rose, by Phyllis Bottome (The Century Company). These two novelettes are studies in national and temperamental contrasts. Their deft characterization, subtle humor, and sense of place entitle them to a place beside the best novels of Ethel Sidgwick. They reveal a disciplined sense of poetry and a tolerance of outlook which spring from an older background than most American work.
The Flying Teuton and Other Stories, by Alice Brown (The Macmillan Company). Last year I had occasion to express my belief that “The Flying Teuton” was the best short story that had been inspired by the war up to that time. It comes to us now in book form with a collection of Miss Brown’s other stories of war and peace, revealing the old qualities of courage, imagination, poetry, and dramatic irony which we have come to associate with the name of Miss Brown. I regard the book as her most satisfying contribution to the short story since “Meadow Sweet.”
John O’May, by Maxwell Struthers Burt (Charles Scribner’s Sons). The wish which I expressed last year that Mr. Burt’s stories should be collected in book form is now gratified by the appearance of this volume. It is one of the few indispensable collections of the year by an American author, and gives Mr. Burt a place among American short story writers beside that of Mrs. Gerould, Wilbur Daniel Steele, H. G. Dwight, and Charles Caldwell Dobie. Few writers have a more thoughtful technique or a more unerring sense of dramatic values.
Home Fires in France, by Dorothy Canfield (Henry Holt & Company). Here is a homely record of the new spirit that the war has developed in the homes of France, and of the human intercourse so rapidly cemented between the French people and ourselves. There is a quiet glow in these stories which idealizes the sufferings of France, and brings home to us poignantly the present realities of her sufferings. If the volume lacks the conscious art of “Hillsboro People,” its substance has been shaped by a personal experience so intense that the book should live as a memorial long after the incidents which it records have passed.
Rush-Light Stories, by Maud Chapin (Duffield & Company). These poetic studies in place, though reminiscent of Gautier, are freshly told in a style that adequately mirrors the backgrounds of which they treat. I find them to be delicately wrought, with a prismatic beauty of phrasing, which errs slightly on the side of preciosity.
The Thunders of Silence, by Irvin S. Cobb (George H. Doran Company). When this short story appeared in the Saturday Evening Post this year, it was discussed widely as a polemic. It is not literature, but it is journalism at its very best, and has fine story values.
Free and Other Stories, by Theodore Dreiser (Boni & Liveright). This collection of stories is uneven, but the best of it is the best of Mr. Dreiser. In “The Lost Phœbe,” which I reprinted as one of the best short stories of 1917, a new legend was added to American letters which had much of the glamor of leisureliness of Hawthorne. Such a story as “McEwen of the Shining Slave Makers” is a fine imaginative projection into a new world, mirroring ironically our human passions in the warfare of two tribes of ants under the blades of a grass forest. Of the social studies in this volume, all show the exact observation and conscientious accumulation of detail for which Mr. Dreiser is noted, and the absence of selective power in many cases which often weakens his best work.
Battles Royal Down North and Harbor Tales Down North, by Norman Duncan (Fleming H. Revell Company). These two collections contain the last stories which we shall have from the pen of Norman Duncan. Reverting as they do to the Labrador shores of which he is the chief interpreter, they show no flagging in Mr. Duncan’s power. No other writer has portrayed so vividly the wet gray shores of the Labrador, nor interpreted so sympathetically the character of the Labrador “Liveyere.” Such a story as “The Little Nipper o’ Hide-an’-Seek Harbor” has not been surpassed by Mr. Duncan in his earlier books, and as one who knows the Labrador personally, I can testify to the reality and imaginative truth of Mr. Duncan’s epic chronicles.
Tales of Giants from Brazil, by Elsie Spicer Eells (Dodd, Mead & Company). These adaptations from the collections of Romero and others are an excellent introduction to the Portuguese folk lore of Brazil. They are told by Mrs. Eells in a simple style which preserves their folk quality without any attempt to refine upon it.
Cheerful—By Request, by Edna Ferber (Doubleday, Page & Co.). Miss Ferber is at her best in such a story as “The Tough Old Dog.” In this story she has not sentimentalized her substance, but has accepted the sentimental values inherent in the theme and chronicled them faithfully. Such a story as this is the product of regionalism in its best sense. In other stories in this volume Miss Ferber’s characterization is of varying degrees of success. In the best of these stories her characters are individualized; in those which are less successful they remain types. But the volume is an important addition to the year’s books by virtue of three or four stories included in it.
Edgewater People, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (Harper & Brothers). While this volume does not as a whole represent Mrs. Freeman’s art at its best, it contains two fine stories in “The Ring With the Green Stone” and “A Retreat to the Goal,” while “The Old Man of the Field” has much of Mrs. Freeman’s familiar charm. These stories have the unity of New England village life.
Great Ghost Stories, edited by Joseph Lewis French (Dodd, Mead & Company). This collection is fairly representative of the best ghost stories that can be gathered, though one misses “The Canterville Ghost” and “The Apparition of Mrs. Veal,” as well as any representation of Poe, de Maupassant, or Bierce. But it does contain twelve stories which may fairly be regarded as classics in their field, and there is not one of them which is not of absorbing interest.
Mimi, by J. U. Giesy (Harper & Brothers). This novelette is an idyl of the Latin quarter of Paris during the first year of the Great War. Written in the tradition of Murger, it has his qualities and defects. It is slightly overstressed and somewhat carelessly written, but it has the human touch and good characterization. I commend it to the reader for its quiet emotional appeal.
Hindu Fairy Tales, by Florence Griswold (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.). These fairy tales retold for children from the “Jataka” are narrated in a simple style which is unpretentious but effective. The legends upon which they are based are among the oldest of the human race, but they retain much of their freshness in this version.
Uncle Remus Returns, by Joel Chandler Harris (Houghton, Mifflin Co.). This volume falls into two parts. It includes six new folk stories by Uncle Remus as told to the son of the little boy who was the eager listener in the earlier volumes. These stories rank with the best of their predecessors. To these have been added five sketches from newspaper files, which are purely ephemeral.
The Ransom of Red Chief and Other Stories, by O. Henry, as chosen for boys by Franklin K. Mathiews (Doubleday, Page & Co.). It was a happy thought which inspired Mr. Mathiews to make his selection. In it the reader will find many old favorites well balanced by less familiar stories. Mr. Mathiews knew well that no coaxing was necessary to introduce these stories to boys, and has wisely dispensed with any educational apparatus.
Gold and Iron, by Joseph Hergesheimer (Alfred A. Knopf). In these three careful studies in time and place Mr. Hergesheimer has sought to reproduce certain aspects of our American tradition. With a meticulous attention to detail, and a keen eye for salient incident, he has slowly built up three portraits which rank with the best that American fiction has given us in the past few years. The comparison with Mr. Galsworthy is an obvious one, but emphasizes a difference rather than a resemblance. There is a certain asceticism of color and emotion in these novelettes alien to Mr. Galsworthy’s romantic temperament.
Long Ever Ago, by Rupert Hughes (Harper & Brothers). During the past few years I have had frequent occasion to comment upon these admirable studies of Irish American life as they first appeared in the magazines. I regard them as the definitive chronicle of the first Irish American generation in its process of assimilation by New York. But it is more than this, for it is a series of richly humorous little dramas, with an inimitable flavor of their own.
Tales From a Famished Land, by Edward Eyre Hunt (Doubleday, Page & Co.). Mr. Hunt has been a prominent official of the American Relief Commission in Belgium, and these poignant stories, continuing as they do the record of Mr. Hunt’s earlier book, “War Bread,” are largely based on actual happenings. But the author has looked upon events with the imaginative eye of a born story writer, and it is hard to forget such finely wrought pictures as “Ghosts” and “Saint Dympna’s Miracle.”
Gaslight Sonatas, by Fannie Hurst (Harper & Brothers). I have expressed my opinion so frequently as to the permanent human values of Miss Hurst’s work that I can only remark here that “Gaslight Sonatas” is one of the very few permanent short story books. Of the seven stories in the volume two have been previously published in volumes of this annual.
Abraham’s Bosom, by Basil King (Harper & Brothers). This short story, now republished in book form from the Saturday Evening Post, is an imaginative rendering of spiritual experience independent of sensory phenomena. Its effectiveness is due to its direct sense of reality and incisive characterization.
Modern Short Stories: A Book for High Schools, Edited with Introduction and Notes by Frederick Houk Law (Century Company). This collection of twenty-two stories drawn entirely from contemporary work is a most persuasive introduction of the short story to young readers. The selection is catholic, and should make the student familiar with many types of plot, characterization and style. The selection ranges from Lafcadio Hearn to Tolstoy, and from Richard Harding Davis to Fiona Macleod. Such notable stories of the past year or two as Phyllis Bottome’s “Brother Leo” and Stacy Aumonier’s “A Source of Irritation” afford a refreshing change from the conventional routine. Mr. Law has succeeded almost admirably in coating the educational pill.
The Land Where the Sunsets Go, by Orville H. Leonard (Sherman, French & Company). This volume was published in 1917 somewhat obscurely, but it has certain remarkable qualities which would make me sorry to neglect it. These sketches of the American desert are divided somewhat evenly between verse and prose. The verse is very bad, and the prose is very good. While the prose sketches are not short stories in the strict sense of the word, they contain much fine characterization and a pictorial value which place them easily first among all imaginative records of the American desert.
The Red One, by Jack London (The Macmillan Company). These four short stories include the best of the work upon which Mr. London was engaged at the time of his death. “Like Argus of the Ancient Times” is a true saga full of the open spaces and the zest of youth lingering on into old age. “The Hussy” also takes its place among the best of Mr. London’s later stories. While the other stories are distinctive I cannot report upon them so favorably.
Canadian Wonder Tales, by Cyrus Macmillan (John Lane Company). These stories are drawn from all parts of Canada and include both Indian and French Canadian legends. While they lack the naïve reality of the folk storyteller’s method, the selection is excellent, and should prove a revelation to the American reader of the rich, though neglected, treasures which lie at our back door. Until Mr. C. M. Barbeau of Ottawa renders his invaluable collections accessible in more popular form, this collection will be practically the only introduction of these treasures to the general reader.
Famous Ghost Stories, edited by J. Walker McSpadden (The Thomas Y. Crowell Company). This selection follows more conventional lines than that of Mr. French, which I spoke of above, but it contains Defoe’s “True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal,” which is perhaps the best ghost story ever written, and which has the advantage of relative unfamiliarity. The other thirteen stories are by Sir Walter Scott, Mrs. Gaskell, Bulwer-Lytton, H. B. Marryat, Fitz-James O’Brien, Hawthorne, Irving, Poe, Kipling, and Dickens. The publisher should be congratulated on the best piece of bookmaking of the year.
E. K. Means (G. P. Putnam’s Sons). This book is so good that it needs no title, but raises the question as to what its successor will be called. It is a series of negro farces in narrative form chronicling the joys and tribulations of Vinegar Atts, Figger Bush, Pap Curtain, Hitch Diamond and other Louisiana negroes. The town of Tickfall will have its pilgrims some day if this book finds the audience it so richly deserves.
Shandygaff, by Christopher Morley (Doubleday, Page & Co.). Mr. Morley says that this book contains short stories and I will leave to the reader the delightful task of hunting them. Meanwhile I beg the question and step aside after introducing the reader to good discourse on many subjects by a man who knows how to talk.
Uncle Abner, by Melville Davisson Post (D. Appleton and Company). Few writers have so conscientious a technique as Mr. Post, or such a fine sense of plot. This collection of mystery stories is woven around the personality of Uncle Abner, whose Greek sense of justice is inflexible. All of these stories are masterly examples of the justifiable surprise ending, yet have the logic and dramatic power which we have come to associate with Athenian tragedy. Their effectiveness is largely due to the value of under statement.
Sketches in Duneland, by Earl H. Reed (John Lane Company). These studies of the dune country of Lake Michigan fall into two groups. The second and larger group consists of character studies drawn from the quaint denizens of this district with skilful humor and fine characterization. “Holy Zeke,” “The Love Affair of Happy Cal,” and “The Resurrection of Bill Saunders” are the best stories in this collection, though the whole is very good indeed.
Miss Mink’s Soldier, by Alice Hegan Rice (Century Company). This is a pleasant collection of Mrs. Rice’s better short stories. They will give quiet pleasure to the reader who is not too exacting and show a wide range of human interest.
The Key of the Fields and Boldero, by Henry Milner Rideout (Duffield & Company). These two picaresque novelettes have the magical glamor of fairy tales set in Maxfield Parrish landscapes. They have given me great pleasure by reason of their prismatic quality and their whimsical humor. Mr. Rideout is a conscious stylist who never falls into preciosity, but we must accept his world without qualification if we are to enter properly into the spirit of his work.
The Best College Short Stories, edited by Henry T. Schnittkind (The Stratford Company). Mr. Schnittkind aims to consider annually the best short stories in college magazines, following the same principles which I have adopted in the present series of volumes. The idea is excellent, and the results are surprisingly good. I find in this collection three stories which would have won a place on my annual Roll of Honor: “The Tomte Gubbe” by Alma P. Abrahamson, “The Dead City” by Isidor Schneider, and “Angèle” by John Jones Sharon. The volume includes a large amount of valuable illustrative material, including contributions by many magazine editors and successful writers.
The Scar that Tripled, by William G. Shepherd (Harper & Brothers). In this short story Mr. Shepherd relates with vivid detail the true story of the lad whose meeting with Richard Harding Davis at Salonica suggested to the latter the story of “The Deserter.” To my mind it is a better story than “The Deserter,” and one which will have a quiet life of its own for some time.
Land’s End and Other Stories, by Wilbur Daniel Steele (Harper & Brothers). I consider this the best volume of short stories by an American author published this year. It rightly claims a place in our literature by virtue of Mr. Steele’s sensitive fidelity to the more abiding romance of ordinary life. These stories have a quality of romantic escape which is rare. Behind the complications which his men and women weave for one another looms the eternal but ever-changing pattern of the sea. Few writers show such economy in the use of their material. These stories will last because of their imaginative reality, their warm color, and their finality of artistic execution.
Mr. Squem and Some Male Triangles, by Arthur Russell Taylor (George H. Doran Company). These sketches have an American philosophy with more background than the casual reader may at first realize. They help to interpret much that would bewilder the foreigner, and their unassuming excellence is noteworthy.
Atlantic Narratives (First and second series), edited with an Introduction by Charles Swain Thomas (The Atlantic Monthly Press). These two volumes are a well chosen selection from the rich store of short stories published in the Atlantic Monthly during the past few years. Edited for college and high school use, the second series is specially adapted to younger readers. Speaking generally, I should say that these collections would be of more use in classes in English narrative than in short story classes, but my personal emphasis would be on the special pleasure they will give the general reader, who will find such old favorites as “Little Selves” by Mary Lerner, “In No Strange Land” by Katharine Butler, “The Garden of Memories” by C. A. Mercer, and “Babanchik” by Christina Krysto reprinted in a format which is a delight to the eye. It would be pleasant if these collections should prove to be the forerunners of an annual series of Atlantic stories.
The Rose-Bush of a Thousand Years, by Mabel Wagnalls (Funk & Wagnalls Company). When the first part of this book was published in a magazine during 1916 its story value instantly attracted my attention, and later it became familiar to a wider public through the screen version in which Madame Nazimova took the principal part. The present reprint has been long called for, and would have gained if the crude and inartistic second part had been omitted. It forms no essential part of the story and is clearly an addition dictated by supposed moving picture demands.
A Book of Short Stories, edited by Blanche Colton Williams (D. Appleton and Company). This collection of thirteen stories for high schools is an admirable collection along well-trodden paths, and to it is added a wealth of biographical and critical material, well-ordered and clearly exposed. The general reader will wish to have the volume on his shelves, because it renders accessible for the first time in book form Major Frederick Stuart Greene’s remarkable story, “Molly McGuire, Fourteen.” It is the finest testimony I know of the quality of Dr. Williams’ teaching that a pupil of hers should have produced so notable a story in her classrooms.
A Gray Dream, by Laura Wolcott (Yale University Press). This collection of short stories and reminiscences has all the quiet glow of Indian summer, dreaming over the past with serene conviction and an unconquerable youth of the spirit. The best that New England Puritanism had to reveal is chronicled in these stories, which will remind more than one reader of Emily Dickinson. They have a finished style which achieves its end without undue pomp and circumstance.
The Scarecrow and Other Stories, by G. Ranger Wormser (E. P. Dutton & Company). These stories by Miss Wormser are the most interesting short story discovery of the year. They are subtle studies in unfamiliar regions of the spirit, and their vivid imaginative quality is not unlike that of Algernon Blackwood, though Miss Wormser’s style is somewhat more self-conscious. I believe that this volume heralds a remarkable future.
II. English and Irish Authors
The Tideway, by “John Ayscough” (Benziger Brothers). This collection of stories has much of Henry Harland’s charm, with a more complete mastery of plot. These stories are, many of them, studies in social atmosphere, and if their substance is tenuous, Monsignor Bickerstaffe-Drew has made the most of it.
Johnny Pryde, by J. J. Bell (Fleming H. Revell Company). The dry merriment of this little book is infectious, and makes it a worthy successor to the best of Wee Macgreegor’s earlier adventures.
The Empty House, John Silence, The Listener, and The Lost Valley, by Algernon Blackwood (E. P. Dutton & Company). The present reprint of four of Algernon Blackwood’s earlier collections of short stories gives me the opportunity to call attention to four books for which I care more personally than for the short stories of any other English writer. No contemporary has continued the magic tradition of Keats and Coleridge more successfully than Mr. Blackwood, particularly in “The Listener” and “The Lost Valley.” These two books at least will last longer than any other volume of short stories by an English or American writer published this year.
The Watcher by the Threshold, by John Buchan (George H. Doran Company). Seven or eight years ago a remarkable book of animistic stories by a writer then unknown to me was issued in this country. It at once awakened my enthusiasm for the writer’s work, and I felt that an important new figure had come into view. But “The Moon Endureth” attracted almost no attention and has since been forgotten. Mr. Buchan has published other pleasant books since then but the present collection is the first to recapture something of the same beauty, and in recommending it cordially to the public I earnestly hope that Mr. Buchan’s publishers will find it possible to reissue “The Moon Endureth.”
Nights in London, by Thomas Burke (Henry Holt & Company). Strictly speaking, this is not a volume of short stories, but to those who greatly admired “Limehouse Nights” last year this volume will be found to hold the same fascination of style and to make clearer the human background out of which that book flowered.
Gentlemen at Arms, by “Centurion” (Doubleday, Page & Co.). This volume stands out as a distinguished record from the host of personal experiences which the war has produced. I think it quite the best of the English collection, and a volume which the earlier Kipling might have been proud to sign. There is a poignancy about these studies which is relieved by a well-considered art.
Under the Hermes, by “Richard Dehan” (Dodd, Mead & Company). This book is written solely with the worthy object of entertaining the reader. Five or six years ago, I remember steaming down the Labrador in a decrepit little boat called, rather magnificently, the Stella Maris (and fisherman’s rumor had it that Lady Morris was so honored by the christening), and my only companion for a week in the stuffy cabin was an independent fur trader on his way to his winter post near Nain. His baggage consisted of two crates of jam and two volumes by “Richard Dehan,” and I remember how we banished sleep for several nights and days by reading them to each other, and then beginning all over again. If I knew where Richard White was now, I would send him a copy of “Under the Hermes” to see if the old magic still lingered. It is a collection of good stories imaginatively told.
Tales of War, by Lord Dunsany (Little, Brown & Company). This volume is a series of sketches and essays dealing with Lord Dunsany’s experiences in the Great War, but it contains one of his best short stories,—“The Prayer of the Men of Daleswood,”—and several fine imaginative fables.
Five Tales, by John Galsworthy (Charles Scribner’s Sons). This collection of short stories and novelettes should be set on the book shelf beside “The Dark Flower” as one of Galsworthy’s two most signal contributions to the poetic interpretation of life. It is not too much to say that this volume takes its place in the great English line.
The Quest of the Face, by Stephen Graham (The Macmillan Company). This volume does not represent the author at his best, but the passionate mysticism which Mr. Graham has voiced so nobly in his Russian books still flames through these pages, and there are several sketches in the volume which I should have felt sorry to have missed.
Children of the Dear Cotswolds, by L. Allen Harker (Charles Scribner’s Sons). These quiet pastoral studies, to be fully enjoyed, should be read aloud slowly by the winter fire, and I think the reader will agree with me that they are a very delicate series of studies in place. Mrs. Harker’s readers have a freemasonry of their own to which the password is a love for England and its forgotten Cotswold places.
The Country Air, by L. P. Jacks (Henry Holt & Company). It is my particular pride that I was one of the first to hail the remarkable qualities of Mr. Jacks’ “Wild Shepherds.” I suppose that the present volume will never be widely popular, but to those who enjoy clean human observation, a broad philosophical outlook, and an imaginative transmutation of facts, this volume will be always welcome.
Waysiders, by Seumas O’Kelly (Frederick A. Stokes Company). As Daniel Corkery was the Irish discovery of last year, so Seumas O’Kelly is the most remarkable Irish find of the present season. These studies lack the disciplined art of Mr. Corkery, but they have the same rich imagination, deep folk spirit, and close observation which distinguished “A Munster Twilight.”
Chronicles of Saint Tid, by Eden Phillpotts (The Macmillan Company). Mr. Phillpotts has done well to collect his magazine stories of the past ten years. As a novelist he seems to me inferior to “John Trevena,” who also deals with Dartmoor characters, but the short story with its narrow confines affords him an excellent opportunity to chronicle the whims of human nature which he has observed, and to set down simple chronicles of the countryside which have a romantic atmosphere of their own.
Nine Tales, by Hugh de Sélincourt (Dodd, Mead & Company). To those of us who found in “A Soldier of Life” last year a novel which revealed far more of the spiritual realities of this war than “Mr. Britling Sees it Through,” these stories have been awaited with eagerness. In “The Sacrifice,” Mr. de Sélincourt has surpassed this novel for human revelation of war’s spiritual effect on England, and “Sense of Sin” is as fine a story in a different manner. The whole book is an eloquent plea for spiritual freedom based on physical health and imaginative life. An art so delicate as this is rare.
Some Happenings, by Horace Annesley Vachell (George H. Doran Company). This is an entertaining collection of stories, by an English writer in the American manner, and ranges in breadth of interest from stories of the American West to English mystery stories and French pastorals.
III. Translations
The Seven That Were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev (Boni & Liveright). These two sombre studies in death rank among the masterpieces of modern Russian literature. “The Seven That Were Hanged” is a study in the human reactions of seven different men between their condemnation and execution. Andreyev is a master of character, relentless in his probing, inevitable in his conclusions. “The Red Laugh,” which is also included in this volume, is an unforgettable study of the horrors of warfare.
Lazarus, by Leonid Andreyev, and The Gentleman from San Francisco, by Ivan Bunin, translated by Abraham Yarmolinsky (The Stratford Company). These stories, published together in one volume, are in vivid contrast. In “Lazarus” Andreyev has written one of his two great prose poems, relating how Lazarus revealed the mystery of the grave. “The Gentleman from San Francisco” has poetry too, but it is essentially an ironic study of the artificial values of commercial prosperity.
We Others: Stories of Fate, Love, and Pity, by Henri Barbusse, translated by Fitzwater Wray (E. P. Dutton & Company). This collection of early stories by Monsieur Barbusse would have been important even if the author was not already known to us by “Under Fire” and “The Inferno.” It includes forty-five short stories of remarkable technique in small compass, sounding almost every note of the human comedy and tragedy with the utmost economy of means and finish of construction. It is perhaps not an accident that the first two stories are the best, but the collection is unusually even and seems sure of reasonable permanence.
Czech Folk Tales, selected and translated by Josef Baudis (The Macmillan Company). This is probably the best volume of fairy stories published this year and should interest students of folk lore and the general reader as well as children. There is a wild poetry in these brief tales, which is well rendered in Dr. Baudis’s translation.
Tales from Boccaccio (The Stratford Company). It was a happy thought of the publishers to select these seven stories at which the most puritan cannot carp, and to present them to us in such an attractive form. An old translation is used whose style faithfully mirrors that of Boccaccio.
The Wife (The Macmillan Company), The Witch (The Macmillan Company), and Nine Humorous Tales (The Stratford Company), by Anton Chekhov. Two new volumes have been added this year to Mrs. Garnett’s admirable edition of Chekhov. It is now universally admitted that Chekhov ranks with Poe and de Maupassant as one of the three supreme masters of the short story. “The Wife” contains at least two of Chekhov’s masterpieces: “A Dreary Story” and “Gooseberries.” With these two stories I should rank “Gusev” and “In the Ravine.” The little book issued by the Stratford Company reprints nine of Chekhov’s less familiar stories, some of which cannot yet be obtained in English elsewhere.
Peasant Tales of Russia, by V. I. Nemirovitch-Dantchenko, translated by Claud Field (Robert M. McBride & Company). These four poetic stories by one of the less known Russian masters are tragic studies of human conflict, softened by pity and a deep-rooted religious belief. They are admirably translated in a style which reflects much of the poetry of the original. “The Deserted Mine” is one of the great short stories of the world.
White Nights, and Other Stories, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnett (The Macmillan Company). These seven short stories and novelettes range over a period of more than twenty years in Dostoevsky’s career. “White Nights,” which is one of his earliest works, is a poem of young love and its effect on solitude and spiritual isolation. “A Faint Heart,” which was written seven or eight years afterwards, is a study of the will and morbid melancholy. It anticipates many of the findings of modern psychiatry. “A Little Hero,” written immediately afterwards, is a kind of autobiography, and sheds much light on Dostoevsky’s early life. But “Notes from Underground” is the masterpiece of the book, and is one of the chief clues to Dostoevsky’s own philosophy.
Jewish Fairy Tales, translated by Gerald Friedlander (Bloch Publishing Company). This collection of eight stories, translated from the Talmud, Yalkut, and other sources, has been wisely selected to cultivate the imagination of Jewish children, but should prove of much interest to the general reader who is likely to be unfamiliar with most of these legends.
Taras Bulba, and Other Tales, by Nikolai V. Gogol (E. P. Dutton & Company). “Taras Bulba” and five of Gogol’s best short stories are now added to Everyman’s Library. The title story is the national epic of Little Russia, and has a Homeric quality of spaciousness, dignity, and imagination which places it among the world’s great masterpieces. The other stories show Gogol in many moods, but chiefly as Russia’s greatest humorous writer.
Creatures That Once Were Men (Boni & Liveright) and Stories of the Steppe (The Stratford Company), by “Maxim Gorky.” These two volumes are in sufficient contrast to one another. The former contains five stories of life among the submerged classes of Russia, which are nobly told with simplicity, imaginative power, and sceptical philosophy. “Stories of the Steppe” contains three prose poems full of a wild gypsy poetry.
Men in War, by Andreas Latsko (Boni & Liveright). These six realistic studies of warfare by an Austrian whose book has been suppressed in his own country are a terrific indictment of the militaristic spirit which has brought on the great conflict and continued it relentlessly for four years. It shares with Barbusse’s “Under Fire” the distinction of being one of the two masterpieces written by combatants during the last four years, and the spirit of the two books will be found to be essentially the same.
Tales of Wartime France, by Contemporary French Writers. Translated by William L. McPherson (Dodd, Mead & Company). This anthology of thirty war stories is well selected, and shows that the war has produced many excellent French stories. One and all, they illustrate the spirit of the nation, and show an artistic reticence which contrasts favorably with the work of English and American writers.
French Short Stories, Edited for School Use, by Harry C. Schweikert (Scott, Foresman and Company). This collection of eighteen stories for the most part follows conventional lines, but the choice is excellent and introduces the reader to several unfamiliar stories by Coppée, Bazin, Claretie, and Lemaître. The critical apparatus is competent, and the biographical notes should prove useful.
The Spanish Fairy Book, by Gertrudis Segovia, translated by Elisabeth Vernon Quinn (Frederick A. Stokes Company). These eight fairy stories show much imagination, a pleasant unpretentious style, and a fine sense of form. While written for quite young children, they also possess much folk lore value.
Serbian Fairy Tales, translated by Elodie L. Mijatovich (Robert M. McBride & Co.). I would rank this with Dr. Baudis’s “Czech Folk Tales” as one of the two best books of fairy tales published this year. Like Ispirescu’s collection of Roumanian stories it seems to bear traces of a secret animistic doctrine disclosing the mystery of change, and to have crystallized in literary form through centuries of traditional storytelling.
Mashi, and Other Stories, by Sir Rabindranath Tagore (The Macmillan Company). Of these stories it is difficult to speak without undue enthusiasm. With admirable economy of means, Tagore has succeeded in conveying the utmost subtlety of nostalgic remembrance, and the sensuous beauty of shrouded landscape in which he projects his figures sustains profound emotional revelation without undue tightening of the literary fabric. His literary method is a strange one to us, but it might well be the beginning of a new short story tradition in which an American writer could find inspiration as fresh as the new impulse that the discovery of Japanese prints brought to Whistler and others that followed him.
Paulownia: Seven Stories from Contemporary Japanese Writers, translated by Torao Taketomo (Duffield & Company). These stories reveal a new world to us, as significant in its way as the world of Tagore’s stories. Some of these Japanese writers have been influenced by European models, but their spirit is essentially national, and springs from an imaginative quality which it is hard for us at first to recapture. All the stories have a finished art, and so has Mr. Torao Taketomo’s translation.
What Men Live By, and Other Stories, by Leo Tolstoi, translated by L. and A. Maude (The Stratford Company). This collection includes four familiar stories by Tolstoi chosen for their social doctrine. The format of the book is pleasant, and the choice of stories excellent.