The titles of these stories are: Christmas roses; Hepaticas; Daffodils; Pansies; Pink foxgloves; Carnations; Staking a larkspur; Evening primroses; Autumn crocuses; and in each there is something in the delicately complicated situation or in revelation of character of which the flower is a symbol. The stories are all English in background and reflect the war.
“Quiet delicacy of style and subtle character analysis mark these nine flower-named stories.”
“Her understanding of character, her appreciation of beauty in all its forms, her ability to work quietly and effectively, yet with dramatic intensity, all make up the sum total of the satisfaction which we find here.” D. L. M.
“With her happy choice of words and smooth rhythm of her style, the artistry is invisible, yet produces a telling effect. The characters and temperaments of her people are implied and evolved, not labelled.”
SEDGWICK, ANNE DOUGLAS (MRS BASIL DE SÉLINCOURT). Third window. *$1.50 (10c) Houghton
The setting of this story is the parental estate of a soldier killed in the war, and in it his young widow, Antonia, his maiden cousin, Miss Latimer, of contracted but acutely intensified vision, and Captain Saltonhall, the husband’s friend and now Antonia’s lover. Miss Latimer, whose entire limited emotional life had been concentrated on her cousin Malcolm, has succeeded in putting Antonia in an agonized frame of mind. The latter is torn by misgivings that, by marrying Saltonhall, she will be unfaithful to her first husband. By certain telepathic powers Miss Latimer obtains a knowledge of the unspoken thoughts in the two lovers’ minds and with it conjures up a vision of Malcolm’s sorrowing ghost standing by the fountain (seen from the third window of the drawing-room). The result is a tragedy, for the distressed Antonia takes an overdose of her sleeping powders.
“Few writers of fiction today can equal in perfection of style the work of Anne Douglas Segwick. But ‘The third window’ has an intrinsic interest as a story.” F. A. G.
“It is a welcome relief to find, among the flood of books that exploit the present interest in psychic phenomena, one that is both an artistic piece of work, and a sincere attempt to penetrate beneath the usual morbid sentimentalism of the theme to the vital problems involved in a belief in survival.” H. W. M.
“It has much of the delicate precision of line and enhanced effect of perspective which the frame of a fine window can give to the view which it reveals. But the perfection in arrangement is not complete, and the flaws which appear come close to calling in question the validity of Miss Sedgwick’s studied placement of events and deliberate simplification. Yet even with these lapses, ‘The third window’ keeps a singular and exquisite beauty.” C. M. R.
“Her characters are drawn with deftness, delicacy and skill, the book is beautifully written in a style at once clear and subtle, and all the values of the picture are finely maintained. Yet for all its excellences it has one great flaw, a defect at the very root of the argument. The reader cannot but believe that Antonia’s fondness for Malcolm was a very superficial thing, since she was not only willing but even anxious so quickly to put another man in his place.”
“Somber in theme, the story is written with exquisite delicacy and grasping strength.”
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
“The redeeming features of the book are its truth to English life and its brevity. It may be added also that the delineation of the characters, such as they are, is quite skilfully done but there is nothing in the book as a whole which the world could not spare without any great sense of loss.”
“So tense and subtilized is the atmosphere of Mrs de Sélincourt’s story that we fear to breathe lest we should break its charm. Indeed, the story is its atmosphere. It seems to emanate from and surround its characters like the perfume of flowers. Yet they affect us at length as if they were mere automata.”
“The story is told with fine artistry and will appeal to discriminating readers with a taste for mental analysis.”
SEGUR, SOPHIE (ROSTOPCHINE) comtesse de.[2] Old French fairy tales. il *$5 Penn
“An octavo with full-page plates, both in color and in black and white, by Virginia Frances Sterrett, is ‘Old French fairy tales,’ compiled by Comtesse de Segur.” (Springf’d Republican) “The titles are: Blondine, Bonne-Biche, and Beau-Minon; Good little Henry; Princess Rosette; The little grey mouse and Our son.” (Booklist)
“These tales are told in that simple and direct fashion that children love and older folk find good. And the illustrations are in truth among the loveliest that have ever translated fairy tale into fairy scene.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
SEIFFERT, MARJORIE ALLEN (ELIJAH HAY, pseud.). Woman of thirty, and Poems of Elijah Hay. *$1.50 Knopf 811
This is vers libre that sings. There is elusive beauty, the sweet and the bitter of life, and the wistfulness of passing youth. The opening piece is a morality play: The old woman, in which the new that makes place for the old is but the old in disguise. The poems are divided into Love poems in summer; Studies and designs; Interlude; Love poems in autumn; and the Poems of Elijah Hay.
Reviewed by H: A. Lappin
“The trouble with ‘A woman of thirty’ is its lack of synthesis. Colour and a free movement, subtleties of thought and rhythm are here, but they have not been integrated: they ravel out into many unconnected loose ends.” L: Untermeyer
“The poems are sophisticated and a little cynical. She writes free verse naturally, unaffectedly and effectively.”
“Her figures, elaborate and excellent as they are, do not penetrate that core of the memory which lives on tranquilly and forever.” M. V. D.
“Almost one wishes that Mrs Seiffert could produce some disassociation in her personality. Then she might give us, besides the poems that are all too human, much more about the harsh black birds flying in the design—more in the style of that odd and very memorable little morality ‘The old woman.’ These are poems that evidence intellectual conception.” Padraic Colum
“It must be admitted that in her failing Mrs Seiffert is better than many who achieve their limited successes; but the dominant overtone is an attempt at a deft sophistication, which can never quite conceal that it is the sophistication of rural Illinois, rather than the sophistication of Chicago, London.” Clement Wood
“Mrs Seiffert writes equally well in free verse and in regularly stressed rhythm. Her work is remarkable for a felicitous ease in expression and a great variety of interests and ideas.”
SELIGMAN, V. J. Salonica side-show. il *$4 Dutton 940.42
“There are four parts to the book, of which the first and last were written in Macedonia during the summer of 1918. Beginning with a description of the Seres road which was of the greatest importance for the British line of communications and on which the writer ‘can really claim expert knowledge’ after spending two years in various camps by its side, he proceeds to give amusing accounts of life behind the front among the British Tommies and Greek Johnnies.... The second part, which explains the events that led to the final offensive of September 15 to September 30, 1918, and gives an account of the battle itself with more details regarding the Anglo-Greek attack at Doiran, will prove of greater value to the historic mind.”—Review
“Mr Seligman’s book embodies a considerable amount of information regarding the expedition, and is printed in a clear and readable form.”
“There is a harmonious combination of humorous anecdote and serious study expressed in an easy but by no means slipshod style. Equally entertaining and instructing, the book is well worth reading.” A. E. Phoutrides
“Mr Seligman treats the expedition so disconnectedly that his is a terrible rag-bag of a book. Some of his stories are excellent.”
“His chapter on ‘The tragedy of Constantine’ is worth reading; nothing that he says about the allied diplomacy in regard to Bulgaria is too strong, but he errs in putting all the blame on the British foreign office.”
“Those who enjoyed ‘Macedonian musings’ will certainly take pleasure in ‘The Salonica side show.’”
SELIGMANN, HERBERT JACOB. Negro faces America. *$1.75 Harper 326
This book is a study of the negro problem in the United States today from the friendly viewpoint of a former member of the editorial staff of the New York Evening Post and the New Republic, who is now connected with the National association for the advancement of colored people, The author discusses race prejudice at length and tries to show how many problems that most people consider to be racial are fundamentally economic and political problems. There are chapters on the negro in industry, the negro as scape-goat of city politics, and the effect of the European war upon the American negro. The Chicago, Omaha and Washington riots are explained and the Arkansas trouble of 1919 is treated under the caption “The American Congo.” There is an appendix on the Bogalusa, Louisiana, trouble by the president of the Louisiana state federation of labor. There is no index.
Reviewed by M. E. Bailey
“‘The negro faces America’ is the best general survey yet written on the negro in the United States. The book contains much fresh material.” M. W. Ovington
“Besides reporting unanswerable facts Mr Seligmann gives us excellent discussion of such questions as ‘social equality’ and sex relationships.” O. G. V.
“Mr Seligmann has written an interesting book, a generous, ardent piece of agitation, but its usefulness is greatly impaired by its failure to make good upon the pretences of its arrangement. The issue as to the evolutionary inferiority of the negro, which, if it was relevant at all to his purpose, deserved thorough scientific presentation, is superficially handled.” L. B. W.
“Mr Seligmann is a vigorous writer, very journalistic, who interests you by the rapid flow of his thought. He has considerable power in arranging his facts, but he quotes and quotes and quotes.”
“The question is here discussed in an intelligent, fair-minded manner.”
“His book should be read by those who wish to know what negroes think and feel.” W: A. Aery
SERAO, MATILDE. Souls divided; tr. from the Italian by William Collinge. *$1.75 Brentano’s
“The telling of a story by means of a series of letters is a fictional form which, though once exceedingly popular, is seldom used by modern writers. This method is employed in the new volume by Matilde Serao, the noted Italian writer. It is the hero, Paolo Ruffo, who does all the letter-writing, the lady to whom all his passionate epistles are addressed never replying to any one of them. She was an orphan, Diana Sforza, eldest daughter of an ancient house, and practically penniless. Gifted with a rarely lovely and very sympathetic voice, she won Paolo Ruffo’s heart by her singing. For a year he worshipped her, followed her about from place to place, and poured out his heart to her in a long succession of most fervent letters. Then, at last, utterly discouraged and broken, he left his native country, accompanied by the faithful sister upon whose shoulder he had wept more than once, and became a wanderer upon the face of the earth.”—N Y Times
“‘Souls divided’ is probably a better novel than the translator has managed to project, yet even with this allowance its theme and substance tend toward emotional futility.”
“The story is like a pressed flower suddenly found in the pages of a Lamartine. For a moment it gives you the nostalgia of the past. Then it crumbles.” L. L.
“Though it is always difficult to judge of the style of a book read only in translation, ‘Souls divided’ would seem to be very well written. As far as its interest and its appeal to the reader are concerned, these will depend largely upon whether that reader is or is not a sentimental temperament.”
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
“The fact that the whole story, except the epilogue, is related in Paolo’s letters to Diana is bound to give it an air of unreality, since he is obliged to write her a detailed description of her own wedding. But the southern passion of the letters, though it strikes one as a little strained in our colder northern tongue, has a genuine ring about it, and the lady reader who falls under its spell will readily forgive such little improbabilities. The translation is above the average.”
SERGEANT, ELIZABETH SHEPLEY. Shadow-shapes; the journal of a wounded woman, October 1918–May 1919. *$2 Houghton 940.48
In this record of her hospital experiences the writer attempts to envisage “a vast, embracing, unseizable truth that was essentially our common possession. The heightened glow cast by danger and death on the faces of the young, and its fading into the rather flat daylight of survival; the psychological dislocation of armistice; the weariness of reconstruction; the shift in Franco-American relations that followed President Wilson’s intervention in European affairs; and the place of American women in the adventures of the A. E. F.” (Preface) The three parts of the book are: The wing of death; Pax in bello; The city of confusion.
“It is, indeed, amazing that Miss Sergeant is able to make her meagre details of vivid interest, but such is her art that she ably succeeds in holding attention throughout the pages of this novel journal.” C. K. H.
“The book derives a unity from its synthesis of fragments—a shade too clinical at times, but otherwise sharply realistic and delicately expressed.”
“Books so concentrated, so vivid, and so sustained in their spiritual excitement rarely get written.”
“How readable ‘Shadow-shapes’ is, and what is more, how full of feeling, of generosity, of the gold of human intercourse delicately essayed, of difficult things bravely thought out, of fine things appreciated, of good things described with sympathy, accuracy—this quite outweighs in my impression of it that vast excess of the sympathy over the accuracy, of the personal over the impersonal which, artistically at least, is a serious fault.” R. L.
“Originality is a force everywhere, and Miss Sergeant’s ‘Shadow-shapes’ is a very original volume. Miss Sergeant is an accomplished stylist, her art conceals itself. Picture after picture rises before us, in its very color, form and significance. If Miss Sergeant is supremely sensitive to the drama of minds, she is no less sensitive to the beauty of nature. Truly, every one should read this book.” Amy Lowell
“A book of fine perceptions, enriched by a background of feeling and intelligence.”
“Miss Sergeant has done much more than give a vivid record of hospital experiences. That indeed, although interesting, is the least part of an unusual book. The figures which Miss Sergeant draws from real life, frequently giving initials or only first names, are extraordinarily vivid and human.”
Reviewed by E. B. Moses
SETON-WATSON, ROBERT WILLIAM. Europe in the melting pot. *$1.50 Macmillan 940.3
“One of the most authoritative writers on eastern European politics here brings together a series of important papers which he has written during the war. For the most part they are reproduced from The New Europe, the weekly review which he founded in 1916 to represent the policy of himself and of those who cooperated with him. These embraced a league of nations, looking forward ultimately to all-round disarmament; support of the Slav movement; an advanced democratic programme for Russia; a federal solution for the border nations; agrarian reform throughout eastern and southern Europe; parliamentary control over foreign policy; equality of treatment for big and small nations; ‘satisfied nationalism’ as ‘the first essential preliminary to a new international order.’ A few of the papers have appeared in the Round Table or the Contemporary Review and one in the English Review. There are seven maps.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
“Especially well informed, competent, and obstinate in dealing with southern Europe.”
“The book is the work of a historian at grips with reality, and has the stamp of the best qualities of political writing.” N. C.
“The author’s history merely records diplomatic and military events. Of history as a series of processes, dependent mainly on regional economics and national tradition, he shows little conception.”
“His treatment of the Adriatic question in this volume seems to us unfortunate, especially in regard to Fiume.”
“They are an excellent illustration of the best kind of political writing, viz., the application of genuine knowledge and settled principles to the immediate situation which from time to time presents itself.”
SEWALL, MRS MAY (WRIGHT). Neither dead nor sleeping; introd. by Booth Tarkington. *$2.50 Bobbs 134
“There is a peculiar difference between Mrs Sewall’s communications with the world beyond and most of those with which the public is familiar through books without number. For she says that she found the discarnate spirits, urged and led by that of her husband, anxious to give her help and direction. The whole of Mrs Sewall’s nearly 300 pages is filled with the continuous, detailed, personal story of her intimate association and communication with these spirits. There is not much about conditions of life with them, as there usually is in books of this kind, but its place is taken instead by her account of what they did for her, what they taught her, and what she learned of their anxiety to help human beings. Their efforts in her behalf were mainly inspired, she says, by their wish to make it possible for her to give their message to humanity.”—N Y Times
“Strains certain tenets of temperate spiritualism but is brightly written and replete with interest.”
“The story is told with such full detail and sincerity, all resting, too, on the character of a woman so widely and favorably known, as to make on any reader a profound impression.” Lilian Whiting
SEYMOUR, HARRIET AYER. What music can do for you; a guide for the uninitiated. *$2 Harper 780
The author holds that we need a new scheme of education which will be based upon the idea that man is his own salvation, that within himself are all the possibilities for harmony and growth. The new education must furnish the stimulus that will awaken this larger self. This stimulus is music and in this sense music is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Contents: Awakening to life through music; Melody, rhythm, and harmony; Melody; Rhythm; Harmony; Music for children; Practicing; Technique; Music for grown-ups; Phonographs and pianolas; Music and health; The philosophy of music. The appended bibliography contains three groups of book: books on psychology taking cognizance of music; biographies and books on music. There is also a list of phonograph records chosen from the catalogue of the Columbia Graphophone Company.
SEYMOUR, WILLIAM KEAN, ed. Miscellany of British poetry, 1919. *$2 Harcourt 821.08
“This ‘Miscellany of poetry, 1919,’ is issued to the public as a truly catholic anthology of contemporary poetry. The poems here printed are new, in the sense that they have not previously been issued by their authors in book form.” (Prefatory note) Among the contributors are: Laurence Binyon; Gilbert K. Chesterton; William H. Davies; John Drinkwater; Wilfrid Wilson Gibson; Theodore Maynard; Edith Sitwell; and Alec Waugh. There are decorations by Doris Palmer.
“Mr Seymour is to be congratulated on having brought together what is on the whole a very interesting collection of verse. The list of contributors on the cover is in itself reassuring, and when we read the book we find that almost all of them are worthily represented.”
“Chesterton’s St Barbara ballad contains touches as magical as his Lepanto, although the sustained flight does not equal the earlier chant. Lawrence Binyon is represented by verses full of magic, Davies is his own naive self, Drinkwater is faultless and polished, Edith Sitwell is whimsically delightful, Muriel Stuart is sharply dramatic, and, best of all, W. W. Gibson appears in verses equal to his best.” Clement Wood
“To sum up, Mr Seymour’s book can be recommended to those who already possess collections of contemporary poetry in which poets of more modern temper are represented, or to those reactionaries who will read nothing but the most conservative verse.” Marguerite Williams
“Mr Seymour has not exercised, or indeed sought to exercise, the faintest critical faculty in forming his collection.”
“There is a wholesome (one means esthetically, not morally wholesome) departure from the preciosity, the fine-spun, over-intellectual, finically phrased impressionism that was, in prewar days, the distinctly Georgian note.”
SHACKLETON, SIR ERNEST HENRY. South. new ed il *$6 (4½c) Macmillan 919.9
The book is the story of Shackleton’s last expedition, 1914–1917, undertaken to achieve the first crossing of the Antarctic continent. It failed in its object, owing to the loss of one of its ships, but, says the author: “The struggles, the disappointments, and the endurance of this small party of Britishers, hidden away for nearly two years in the fastnesses of the polar ice, striving to carry out the ordained task and ignorant of the crisis through which the world was passing, make a story which is unique in the history of Antarctic exploration.” (Preface) Contents: Into the Weddell sea; New land; Winter months; Loss of the Endurance; Ocean camp; The march between; Patience camp; Escape from the ice; The boat journey; Across South Georgia; The rescue; Elephant island; The Ross sea party; Wintering in McMurdo sound; Laying the depots; The Aurora’s drift; The last relief; The final phase. The appendices contain: Scientific work; Sea-ice nomenclature; Meteorology; Physics; South Atlantic whales and whaling; The expedition huts at McMurdo sound. There are eighty-eight illustrations and diagrams and an index.
“The volume is extremely well illustrated.”
“Sir Ernest Shackleton’s new book adds another to those priceless records of high human quality, and the story that it tells, aside from its scientific value, will have many readers who will find its pages enthralling and deeply moving.”
“Few modern authors have so effectively utilized the pent-up force of sturdy Anglo-Saxon monosyllables.” Philip Tillinghast
“Sir Ernest Shackleton’s book is written in a vigorous style.”
“The story of the voyage that six men made in an open boat across eight hundred miles of the roughest water in the world, to bring relief to the twenty-two companions who remained on the island, rivals the best sea tale ever written. It is good for any one to read such a narrative as ‘South!’ We see what men may be.”
“The story is told simply, for the most part without much passion; but there is no need for that to hold our interest. This book, and many another like it, are written for the general reader; and the general reader (who would not read a scientific treatise if it were set before him) is rather prone to forget the scientific aspects of polar exploration. Sir Ernest Shackleton yields, perhaps too far, to this consideration.”
SHACKLETON, ROBERT. Book of Chicago. il *$3.50 Penn 917.7
“To Chicago goes Mr Shackleton, after having exhausted New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The Art institute, the clubs, the theatres, the elevated, the freight subway and the river all come in for his inspection, and Mr Shackleton has apparently gone over, under, around and through Chicago with a thoroughness that not many of its citizens would care to duplicate. Anon, he varies a charming style by telling stories, and by gallant attempts to rake up some worth-while poetry that has been written concerning the city.”—Boston Transcript
“For each matter which Mr Shackleton has not set down, there are a dozen that he has. Mr Shackleton is always interesting.” G. M. H.
“A truly interesting and broadly conceived tribute to the much abused ‘Windy city.’”
“The book is far from being a catalogue of land-marks and monuments, or even of merits and faults. It gives to the city a personal quality, and to the reader a sense that here is a mass of people, living, breathing, and enjoying life.”
SHAFER, DONALD CAMERON. Barent Creighton. *$2 (2c) Knopf
“An old time story of youthful romance and hot adventure, well seasoned ... with simple love and pleasant humor”—thus the author himself correctly describes his story. In the early forties, when the hero’s fortunes are at their lowest, an old aunt leaves him a legacy of four old keys, a box full of small gold figures of Inca gods, an undecipherable manuscript and the family estate with 5000 acres to hold in trust for his wife to be. The first three items point to family secrets all of which develop and unravel in the course of the story in quaintly romantic fashion with underground passages and chambers and hidden treasures. Of immediate interest to Barent, however, is to find a wife that is to save him from a debtor’s prison. How a wealthy land greedy neighbor of the Creighton estate offers his daughter to fill the place; how the daughter resents the bargain; how Barent tears up the contract when he finds he loves her and faces a variety of troubles instead; how the tables turn and how Ronella comes to require Barent’s help; and how the two really love each other more than gold and acres, make a fascinating tale.
“Very readable romance.”
“This is Mr Shafer’s first novel, and it is one of considerable promise, colorful and related with no little spirit.”
“A broad vein of humor rescues the tale from melodramatic lapses.”
SHANKS, EDWARD BUXTON. People of the ruins. *$1.90 (2c) Stokes
According to this “story of the English revolution and after,” (sub-title), the revolution broke out in 1924. During its first skirmishes Jeremy Tuft, physicist, is overtaken by a bomb while inspecting a new scientific discovery. Thanks to the new “ray” he awakens from the shock and crawls out of his hole in the ground in the year 2074 into a ruined and degenerate world. Almost all traces of our civilization are gone and the people are too ignorant and tired to restore what is left or to rebuild better. What is left is a ruling house in England, landlordism, and a degenerate industrialism in the north of England. In the ruler—an old Jew known us the “Speaker”—however, some of the old ambition survives. The form it takes to desire to reconstruct, with the aid of the oldest surviving mechanics, the onetime efficient gun. Now Jeremy Tuft is pressed into his services and the gun becomes a fact. Immediately there is war and more disaster in which the Speaker, his daughter Eva, and Jeremy, her lover, all go down to destruction together.
“The author writes entertainingly, imaginatively, and with a creative skill that makes his work pleasant if not nutritious reading.”
SHANNON, ALASTAIR. Morning knowledge: the story of the new inquisition. *$5 Longmans 192
“For two years and a half a prisoner of war in Turkey, the author devoted nearly half of that period to the writing of this work. If, perhaps, somewhat premature as a presentment of philosophy, the book is at all events an essay at the expression of a young man’s ‘positive assurance in the value of man as a real creator.’ Beginning with negations, the author advances by degrees to the conclusions that there is ‘more in life than mechanism, and more in reason than intellect’; that intellect is ‘so formed as to grasp mechanism wholly’; and that reason is so formed as to reflect life wholly and to find for life a purpose which is not yet palpable, though psychologically evident.”—Ath
“A very beautiful and a very sane philosophy will be found in these pages. The poetry in them has a lyrical quality reminiscent of Mr W. B. Yeats, and the prose at times glows at white heat. Although Mr Shannon’s work is uneven, and sometimes baffling, it is never commonplace.”
“The condemnation of Mr Shannon’s method lies in the obscurity of his own conclusions.”
SHARP, DALLAS LORE. Patrons of democracy. 80c (8c) Atlantic monthly press 379