BOOKS.
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.
ENGLISH publishers have issued over eighty books since the middle of last week. About a dozen of them are of obvious general interest. Four novels strike one immediately, among them Revolving Lights, by Dorothy M. Richardson (Duck- worth). Her readers will take this instalment up with great excitement, remembering that Miriam had become engaged to a Russian Jew in the last book, though it had taken her four volumes to do it. Messrs. Hutchinson publish a new volume by Mr. E. F. Benson, Colin. Mr. Beresford has a new novel called Love's Pilgrimage (Collins), and Mr. Denis Mackail's According to Gibson is issued by Heinemann.
London playgoers will remember Mr. G. Martinez Sierra's The Romantic Young Lady, a pleasant superficial comedy of modern Spain. Messrs. Chatto and Windus have issued the author's plays in two volumes.
The second volume of the Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783-1919, edited by Sir A. W. Ward and Dr. G. P. Gooch, has appeared (Cambridge University Press).
A translation has appeared of M. Caillaux's Whither France? Whither Europe ? (Fisher Unwin). It is a book which made many Frenchmen of moderate opinion wonder whether the cries of " Traitor " which were levelled against M. Caillaux in the War had not a fair element of war neurosis in them. It will be interesting to see how it is received in England, where many of us were ready in the heat of the moment to agree with France about her ex-Minister.
M. Paul Gauguin's Letters are published by Messrs. Heine- mann with a preface by Mr. Frederick O'Brien. The photo- graphs remind us how beautiful, how classical was his work, while the letters show a man struggling with poverty and engaged in bitter quarrels with the police and Government in Tahiti, and having his " poor little house " inundated in an appalling storm.
Mr. Oscar Browning publishes his Memoirs of Later Years (Fisher Unwin) ; and a translation of M. Anatole France's La Vie en Fleur is published by John Lane. A book which will probably prove very exciting is Mr. Michael Collins's (hors Story," told to Hayden Talbot " (Hutchinson). Particularly
thrilling are the accounts of Collins's many escapes from the Black-and-Tans. The book is polemical and propagandist. Not so Mr. Mackenzie's Russia Before Dawn (Fisher Unwin), which seems just. Messrs. Methuen issue an important book on Rembrandt by Mr. Meldrum. It is illustrated by over 500 photographs. But perhaps the week's most attractive book, also published by Messrs. Methuen, is Mr. Ponsonby's English Diaries. There are selections from 120 English journals, from the middle of the sixteenth century to Barbellion. Beside those of Fanny Burney, Bubb Dodington, Byron and Evelyn, and Queen Victoria, are a number of entertaining less known writers. It is prefaced by a most attractive essay on diary writing by Mr. Ponsonby, and each journal has a little introduction and running comments. It is a pity that the print is not more worthy of so agreeable a book. THE LITERARY EDITOR.
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