Messrs. J. M. Dent and Co. have published another instalment
—fifty volumes—of their " Everyman'e Library " (is. net per vol.) The choice seems to be very well made, not only for the acknowledged favourites which it gives, in excellent form and with introductions adding much to the value, but for some books which it is not an obvious thing to include. No publisher can afford to be insensible to the literary charm of an expired copy- right; but Messrs. Dent do not consider it indispensable.
So Dr. Francis Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty, revised by the author, is included ; and this is a book which is not for
every reader, though it will be welcome to a considerable public.
Among the books on what we may describe as the higher level are twelve volumes of John Ruskin's works,—Modern
Painters, The Stones of Venice, Sesame and Lilies, &c., with Intro- ductions by Lionel Cust, L. March Phillips, and Sir Oliver Lodge ; Shelley's Poetical Works, 2 vole., with Introduction by A. H. Koszul ; Stanley's Eastern Church, with Introduction by A. J.
Grieve, M.A. ; Hakluyt's Voyages (Vols. I. and II., out of an intended eight), with Introduction by John Masefield. Fiction is
bound to occupy the greatest amount of space in an enterprise
of this kind. In this province we have ten volumes of Dickens, including Pickwick, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzstewit, and David Copperfield. To these Mr. G. K. Chestertou, as clever as ever, and perhaps not so provoking as we sometimes find him, contributes introductions. He is a " Dickensian "—if he does not mind being so styled—of the very first class, and these criticisms show him at his best. We are heartily at one with him in his estimate of Dora and Agnes in David Copperfield. But with regard to Dora, surely she was not always the silly creature of the later chapters. She talks quite smartly in the garden at Norwood. Other examples of fiction are Louisa Alcott's Little Women and Good Wives and Marryat's Children of the New Forest.
Previous page
