The Wickhamses. By W. Pett Ridge. (Methuen and Co. Gs.)
—The Wiekhamses is a story of a working printer and his family, told with the realistic detail of which Mr. Pett Ridge is a master. The Wickhamses come up from the country in the opening chapter to settle in London, and the town gradually gets its hold on the younger members of the family. Mr. Wickhams himself, how- ever, is glad, after the ultimate failure of his business, to go back again into the country. The story is told in the first person by Mr. Wickhams's second son, the elder being already out in the world. Mr. Pett Ridge of set purpose makes his characters talk the very unlovely middle-class dialect of the day, and his pictures of life in offices, and of small tea-parties given in chambers and in rooms over shops, &c., &c., are all drawn with a realism which purposely excludes any hint of poetry. People who like to read of the ugly side of the world of every day will be interested by the book. It has all the merit which comes of sincerity in writing and of the anxiety of the author to give a truthful picture of the subject before him.
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