30 APRIL 1927, Page 17

It is a puzzle to know why the publishers of

the "The English Library" (which we note is to contain The Memoirs of Letitia Pilkington by our contributor, Miss Iris Barry) should consider it worth while to reprint Domestic Manners of the Americans, by Frances Trollope (Routledge. 10s.). This dreary book ran into a fifth edition in 1839. We doubt its creating any stir now. It is the diary of a harassed and unhappy woman (mother of the great Anthony) who tried to make her fortune in Cincinnati and fulled disastrously. As Mr. Michael Sadleir says in his introduction : "Modern opinion will find little cause for fury in these pages." The author's criticisms have the staleness to which only out-of- date caricature can achieve." Mrs. Trollope, however, was the first of a line of writers not yet extinct.