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BANS ANDERSEN THE MAN. By Elith Reumert., Translated by Jessie Brochner. (Methuen. 10s. 6d.)— This volume is an amusing complement to Andersen's tear- stained Autobiography, for it is written by a champion with an ardent intention to explain •the triple-distilled quality of those tears. To an audience other than Danish, the passion- ate outcry in these pages against the long-dead critics and friends who dared to smile at the personal eccentricities of Andersen is likely to be incomprehensible. Who needs to defend Andersen at all, nowadays ? Has he not become as legendary and permanent a figure as Homer ? Yet here is a good-sized volume full of naive indignation against contem- poraries who dared to hint-that Andersen was vain, or that he was a tuft-hunter, or that he gave a great deal of trouble to hotel-keepers by his fussy demands. It has a touch of
unreality, and one feels that the author must be a sort of Rip van Winkle who has not yet stepped out into the street of jmodern literature and heard the hooting of the innumerable taxis of journalism.
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