7 JUNE 1919, Page 21

English Literature during the Last Half.C'entury. By John W. Cunliffe.

(Macmillan. 108. 6d. net.)—After an introductory chapter showing how social conditions in the last half-century —" a period of extraordinarily rapid transition, political, social, and intellectual "—reacted upon literature, Professor Cunliffe goes on to study the work of a number of well-known British writers, including George Meredith and Mr. Rudyard Kipling, George Giasing and Mr. Thomas Hardy. Professor Cunliffe makes only a passing reference to the poets of the period, as distinct from the writers of both prose and verse. He is more generous in his appreciation of " the new poets," though his selection is somewhat narrow. In the chapter on " The New Novelists " his discrimination has not been very careful.