14 JUNE 1902, Page 23

A King's Woman. By Katharine Tynan. (Hurst and Blackett. 6s.)

—It would be well to make Irish political history "taboo" as a subject for fiction. We can read with absolute equanimity a partisan romance of the Civil War, but the Irish fires burn yet too fiercely. It is perfectly true that the revolt of the "98" was put down with many circumstances of horrible cruelty ; yet there had been great provocations. It is only too easy to recriminate. And meanwhile all the raison d'être of the novel disappears. It certainly does not entertain, and it does anything rather than edify. "Katharine Tynan" can do such excellent work in fiction —witness, among other books, "The Handsome Brandons "—that we are sorry not to be able to pass a more favourable verdict on her latest book.