Gran'ma's Jane. By Mary E. Mann. (Methuen and Co. 6s.)
—Mrs. Mann begins her story in a way that indicates no little courage. A man is hanged; a wife of a year's standing dies in childbirth—the child is the heroine of the story—and the bereaved husband, a dissipated youth of twenty-two, comes home tipsy to hear the news. And the story is not incongruous to this beginning. But it has an element of nobility running through it. Georgie Morrison, son of one of the most prosperous and respectable families in the town, represents this element. It is good to read about him; he is quite human, for all his nobility. His father and mother, too, are pictured with no little subtlety of touch. On the whole, we are not disposed to com- plain of a novelist who compensates the gloomy colouring which prevails in most of her work with a relief so skilfully applied.
Previous page
