The Girl's Own Poetry - Book. Edited by E. Davenport. (Griffith, Farran,
Okeden, and Welsh.)—This handsome volume of between five hundred and six hundred pages is a companion volume to " The Boy's Own Poetry-Book," and has been compiled for a similar purpose. It does not profess to give of necessity the best work of the writers represented, but that which is most suited to the interests and capacities of the juvenile public whom it addresses ; and an effort has been made to consult the wants of girls of various ages and all orders of intelligence. This effort has met with a measure of success which must be accounted considerable, seeing that poems dealing with love between the sexes have to be almost entirely excluded from a collection of this kind. All old favourites—or supposed favourites—with girls, like Mrs. Sigourney and Mrs. Hemans, have been liberally drawn upon ; while more modern writers, such as Mrs. Browning, George Eliot, Mr. Locker-Lampson, Professor Blackie, the late Miss Amy Levy, and even Mr. Swinburne, are adequately represented. In- deed, under such headings as "Girls and Girl-Life," "Heroines in Poetry," and " Songs for Every Day," a wonderful amount of more than average verse is ranged. An essentially new feature in a collection of this kind is the poetry dealing with the school and college life of girls. Girton and Newnham are here championed in original and smooth-flowing verses—somewhat Tennysonian in flavour—by Miss Louise Lumsden and Miss Isabella Postgate.
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