Contemporary English Woodcuts. With an Introduction by Campbell Dodgson. (Duckworth.
42s. net.)
The widespread revival of wood engraving in England led us to expect the present volume to be of exceptional interest. It is disappointing. The selection does not convey the really high quality which English wood engraving has recently achieved, nor is it made with a very sure taste. It is charit- able to blame this on to those difficulties that resulted in omissions which were not, we are assured, the desire or the fault of the publisher or editor. That does not, however, excuse certain inclusions. Mr. Dodgson's introduction is an interesting, short survey of wood engraving in the past and in the present revival, but to state that Mr. Gibbings or Mr. McKnight Kauffer's work is representative of Cubism or post- Impressionism (apparently synonyms to Mr. Dodgson) is a curious claim. It can be based only on ignorance of the meaning of those terms. Mr. Kauffer's woodcut is a piece of trickery that is nearer to Futurism, nor is Mr. Gibbings's work very much more profound. Mr. John Nash, Mr. Wadsworth, and Mr. Ethelbert White supply the most dis- tinguished contributions to the volume. Mrs. Raverat's "The Bolshevists" is a sound piece of work, and Mr. Green- wood's "The Dale Road" is well organized and competently executed. The edition is limited to 550 copies.
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