A curious particle of military history is con- tained in
The Rowboat War, by Fred Swayze (Macmillan, I3s. 6d.). In 1812, Britain and America came to blows over the control of the Great Lakes. Mr Swayze, a Canadian, has gathered facts to make a short book, full of atmosphere, about the foiling of American plans, and the remarkable Robert Livingston, fur- trader and Indian agent, who played so large a part in this.
From wars and high political action we turn to the outwardly quiet, inwardly seething lives of talented women in the man's world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Fanny Burney, A Story Biography, by Josephine Kamm (Methuen, 16s.), tells, unpretentiously, the story of the author of Evelina, greatest best-seller of its day. All necessary portraits are clearly drawn. Dr Johnson is not permitted to steal the scene, and Dr Burney and his family come through as real and engaging people. No one, probably, would bracket Evelina with Jane Eyre, but there were similarities between the Brontë sisters and Miss Burney, in that the last thing anyone expected or wanted them to do was write for a living. Also, each had a private world richer and more sustaining than the insipid thing decreed by society for young ladies in those days. Weaver of Dreams: The Girlhood of Charlotte Brontë, by Elfrida Vipont (Hamish Hamilton, 21s.), is another example of the story- biography method, carried through at a fair pace, factual, not sentimental: a useful door- way to the haunted, haunting Haworth world.
WILLIAM BUCHAN
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