In The Village Book (Cape, 'Ts. 6d.) Mr. Henry Williamson
deals with various aspects of life in a Devonshire village over- looking an estuarine and marshy stretch of coast. The present volume reflects the Winter and Spring seasons ; Summer and Autumn are left for the promised sequel. Sketches and stories alternate with impressionalistic description of the fields and sky and sea, and there are chapters on animal and bird life that show the author, with his manly contempt for cruelty, at his best. Perhaps it is Mr. Williamson's hatred of callousness towards the brute and feathered creation that prejudices his whole view of humanity. At any rate, his por- traits of men and women are too much warped by bitterness and cynicism. If it was once the custom to idealise rural life, the fashion has now certainly swung to the other extreme, and it is regrettable to find a writer of Mr. Williamson's quality yielding to the prevailing mode. The descriptive studies of Nature itself reveal him, once-more, as a sensitive and impassioned artist, carrying on without imitation the tradition of Richard Jefferies.
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