4 JANUARY 1930, Page 34

Surely the public is by this time bored by reading

about Cora Pearl, Maria Manning and Lola Montes, but Mr. Horace Wyndham by issuing Feminine Frailty (Berm, 18s.) seems to think otherwise. In addition to matter that has been hashed and re-hashed time and again, the volume serves up a few reasonably new dishes, in the shape, for instance, of a couple of women swindlers and one murderess (Edith Carew), who have not yet been written to death. The value of Mr. Wynd- ham's insight into human psychology may be measured by his remark that "if Edith Carew did administer poison, she was merely responding to a feminine impulse." We like the "merely."

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