Charlotte Bronte, 1816 - 1916. Edited by Butler Wood. (T. Fisher
Unwin. 8s. 6d. net.)—Next to Mrs. Gaskell's biography, this is per- haps the most interesting book yet published about the Bront8 sisters. It contains a dozen essays read to the Bronte Society during the last twenty years or written for the occasion of this centenary tribute, with many illustrations. The late Dr. Garnett's dis- criminating estimate of Charlotte's place in nineteenth-century fiction is excellent. " Charlotte is not a poet and Emily is not an artist," he wrote in reference to the critics who rated Charlotte's verses higher than Emily's. Sir Sidney Lee's account of Charlotte's London visits shows in much curious detail that Dr. John in Villette was a lifelike portrait of Mr. George Smith, the publisher. Mr. G. K. Chesterton has a characteristic note on Charlotte as a Romantic. Mrs. Humphry Ward's " Some Thoughts on Charlotte Brontë." contains some family reminiscences and the outspoken
verdict—" Which was the greater, she or Emily ? To my mind, Emily, by far "—on the controversy that—will always divide the reading world. The account of the Bronte Society by Mr. H. E. Wroot shows that the Society, alone among special literary societies of the kind, is still flourishing, partly because it is based on local patriotism.
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