LITERATURES OF THE WORLD.
Edited by EDMUND GOSSE,
Hon. M. A. of Trinity College, Cambridge.
ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE. By Gilbert Murray, M. A., Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“A sketch to which the much-abused word ‘brilliant’ may be justly applied. Mr. Murray has produced a book which fairly represents the best conclusions of modern scholarship with regard to the Greeks.”—London Times.
“An illuminating history of Greek literature, in which learning is enlivened and supplemented by literary skill, by a true sense of the ‘humanities.’ The reader feels that this is no book of perfunctory erudition, but a labor of love, performed by a scholar, to whom ancient Greece and her literature are exceedingly real and vivid. His judgments and suggestions are full of a personal fresh sincerity; he can discern the living men beneath their works, and give us his genuine impression of them.”—London Daily Chronicle.
“A fresh and stimulating and delightful book, and should be put into the hands of all young scholars. It will make them understand, or help to make them understand, to a degree they have never yet understood, that the Greek writers over whom they have toiled at school are living literature after all.”—Westminster Gazette.
“Brilliant and stimulating.”—London Athenæum.
“A powerful and original study.”—The Nation.
“Mr. Murray’s style is lucid and spirited, and, besides the fund of information, he imparts to his subject such fresh and vivid interest that students will find in these pages a new impulse for more profound and exhaustive study of this greatest and most immortal of all the world’s literatures.”—Philadelphia Public Ledger.
“The admirable perspective of the whole work is what one most admires. The reader unlearned in Greek history and literature sees at once the relation which a given author bore to his race and his age, and the current trend of thought, as well as what we value him for to-day.... As an introduction to the study of some considerable portion of Greek literature in English translations it will be found of the very highest usefulness.”—Boston Herald.
“Professor Murray has written an admirable book, clear in its arrangement, compact in its statements, and is one, we think, its least scholarly reader must feel an instructive and thoroughly trustworthy piece of English criticism.”—New York Mail and Express.
“At once scholarly and interesting.... Professor Murray makes the reader acquainted not merely with literary history and criticism, but with individual living, striving Greeks.... He has felt the power of the best there was in Greek life and literature, and he rouses the reader’s enthusiasm by his own honest admiration.”—Boston Transcript.
“Professor Murray has contributed a volume which shows profound scholarship, together with a keen literary appreciation. It is a book for scholars as well as for the general reader. The author is saturated with his subject, and has a rare imaginative sympathy with ancient Greece.”—The Interior, Chicago.
“Written in a style that is sometimes spasmodic, often brilliant, and always fresh and suggestive.”—New York Sun.
“Professor Murray’s careful study will be appreciated as the work of a man of unusual special learning, combined with much delicacy of literary insight.”—New York Christian Advocate.
MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By
Edmund Gosse, Hon. M. A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“Mr. Gosse has been remarkably successful in bringing into focus and proportion the salient features of this vast and varied theme. We have read the book, not only with pleasure but with a singular emotion.... His criticism is generally sympathetic, but at the same time it is always sober.”—London Daily Chronicle.
“Mr. Gosse’s most ambitious book and probably his best. It bears on every page the traces of a genuine love for his subject and of a lively critical intelligence. Moreover, it is extremely readable—more readable, in fact, than any other single volume dealing with this same vast subject that we can call to mind.... Really a remarkable performance.”—London Times.
“A really useful account of the whole process of evolution in English letters—an account based upon a keen sense at once of the unity of his subject and of the rhythm of its ebb and flow, and illumined by an unexampled felicity in hitting off the leading characteristics of individual writers.”—London Athenæum.
“Probably no living man is more competent than Mr. Gosse to write a popular and yet scholarly history of English literature.... The greater part of his life has been given up to the study and criticism of English literature of the past, and he has a learned and balanced enthusiasm for every writer who has written excellently in English.”—London Saturday Review.
“The bibliographical list is of extreme value, as is the bibliographical work generally. It is just one of these books which every reader will want to place among his working books.”—New York Times.
“To have given in a moderate volume the main points in a literature almost continuous for five centuries is to have done a marvelous thing. But he might have done it dryly; he has made every sentence crisp and sparkling.”—Chicago Times-Herald.
“A book which in soundness of learning, sanity of judgment, and attractiveness of manner has not been equaled by the work of any other author who has sought to analyze the elements of English literature in a concise and authoritative way.”—Boston Beacon.
“Thoroughly enjoyable from first to last. It traces the growth of a literature so clearly and simply, that one is apt to underrate the magnitude of the undertaking. Mr. Gosse’s charming personality pervades it all, and his happy manner illuminates matter that has been worked over and over until one might imagine all its freshness gone.”—Chicago Evening Post.
“This is not a mere collection of brief essays on the merits of authors, but a continuous story of the growth of literature, of which the authors and their works are only incidents. The book is lucid, readable, and interesting, and a marvel of condensed information, without its seeming to be so. It can be read by nine out of ten intelligent people, not only without fatigue, but with pleasure; and when it is finished the reader will have a comprehensive and intelligent view of the subject which will not only enable him to talk with some ease and confidence upon the merits of the principal creators of English literature, but will also point the way to the right sources if he wishes to supplement the knowledge which he has derived from this book.”—Pittsburg Times.
“That he has been a careful student, however, in many departments, the most unrelated and recondite, is evident on every page, in the orderly arrangement of his multitudinous materials, in the accuracy of his statements, in the acuteness of his critical observations, and in the large originality of most of his verdicts. He says things that many before him may have thought, though they failed to express them, capturing their fugitive expressions in his curt, inevitable phrases.”—N. Y. Mail and Express.
FRENCH LITERATURE. By EDWARD DOWDEN,
D. Litt., LL. D., D. C. L., Professor of English Literature in the University of Dublin. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
“Certainly the best history of French literature in the English language.”—London Athenæum.
“This is a history of literature as histories of literature should be written.... A living voice, speaking to us with gravity and enthusiasm about the writers of many ages, and of being a human voice always. Hence this book can be read with pleasure even by those for whom a history has in itself little attraction.”—London Saturday Review.
“The book is excellently well done; accurate in facts and dates, just in criticism, well arranged in method.... The excellent bibliography with which it concludes will be invaluable to those who wish to pursue the study further on their own lines.”—London Spectator.
“Remarkable for its fullness of information and frequent brilliancy.... A book which both the student of French literature and the stranger to it will, in different ways, find eminently useful, and in many parts of it thoroughly enjoyable as well.”—London Literary World.
“Professor Dowden is both trustworthy and brilliant; he writes from a full knowledge and a full sympathy. Master of a style rather correct than charming for its adornments, he can still enliven his pages with telling epigram and pretty phrase. Above all things, the book is not eccentric, not unmethodical, not of a wayward brilliance; and this is especially commendable and fortunate in the case of an English critic writing upon French literature.”—London Daily Chronicle.
“A book readable, graphic, not overloaded with detail, not bristling with dates.... It is a book that can be held in the hand and read aloud with pleasure as a literary treat by an expert in style, master of charming words that come and go easily, and of other literatures that serve for illustrations.”—The Critic.
“His methods afford an admirable example of compressing an immense amount of information and criticism in a sentence or paragraph, and his survey of a vast field is both comprehensive and interesting. As an introduction for the student of literature the work is most excellent, and for the casual reader it will serve as a compendium of one of the richest literatures of the world.”—Philadelphia Public Ledger.
“Thorough without being diffuse. The author is in love with his subject, has made it a study for years, and therefore produced an entertaining volume. Of the scholarship shown it is needless to speak.... It is more than a cyclopædia. It is a brilliant talk by one who is loaded with the lively ammunition of French prose and verse. He talks of the pulpit, the stage, the Senate, and the salon, until the preachers, dramatists, orators, and philosophers seem to be speaking for themselves.”—Boston Globe.
“Professor Dowden’s book is more interesting than we ever supposed a brief history of a literature could be. His characterizations are most admirable in their conciseness and brilliancy. He has given in one volume a very thorough review of French literature.”—The Interior, Chicago.
“The book will be especially valuable to the student as a safe and intelligible index to a course of reading.”—The Independent.
SPANISH LITERATURE.
By JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY,
Member of the Spanish Academy.
“Mr. Kelly has written a book that must be read and pondered, for within its limits it has no rival as ‘A History of Spanish Literature.’”—The Mail and Express.
“The work before us is one which no student can henceforth neglect, ... if the student would keep his knowledge of Spanish up to date.... We close with a renewed expression of admiration for this excellent manual; the style is marked and full of piquancy, the phrases dwell in the memory.”—The Spectator.
“A handbook that has long been needed for the use of the general reader, and it admirably supplies the want. Great skill is shown in the selection of the important facts; the criticisms, though necessarily brief, are authoritative and to the point, and the history is gracefully told in sound literary style.”—Saturday Evening Gazette.
“For the first time a survey of Spanish literature is presented to English readers by a writer of ample knowledge and keen discrimination. Mr. Kelly’s work rises far beyond the level of the text-books. So good a critic does not merely comment on literature; he makes it himself.”—New York Bookman.
JAPANESE LITERATURE
By W. G. ASTON, C. M. G., M. A.,
late Acting Secretary at the British Legation at Tokio.
“A volume of unique erudition, wide research, clear discrimination, and excellent design. Mr. Aston has wrought a memorable service not only to those interested in Japan and Japanese studies, but to the world of letters at large.”
Sir Edwin Arnold, in Literature.
“Mr. Aston has written the first complete narrative from early times to the present of the history, the rituals, the poetry, the drama, and the personal outpourings of thoughts and feelings which constitute the body of the literature of Japan.”
Baltimore Sun.
“Mr. Aston has unquestionably enabled the European reader for the first time to enjoy a comprehensive survey of the vast and ancient field of Japanese literature, of which we have had hitherto only furtive and partial glimpses.”
London Times.
“His work is a model of what a manual of this character should be. While it constitutes an admirable guide-book to any one who cares to go deeper into this special subject, it is sufficiently comprehensive to meet the requirements of the average reader or the general student of literature.”
ITALIAN LITERATURE.
By RICHARD GARNETT, C. B., LL. D.,
Formerly Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum.
“Finished and graceful, at once delicate and strong, and never relapses into prosiness.”—The Dial.
“Dr. Garnett is lucid in arrangement, agreeable and correct, and often powerful and felicitous in style. He has done a real service to both English and Italian literatures.”—Literature.
“The manual is a worthy companion of its predecessors, and will be found useful by each one who desires to refresh or enlarge his acquaintance with the magnificent achievements of Italian genius.”—Public Ledger, Philadelphia.
“A most interesting book, written from a full knowledge of the subject, but without pedantry. The style is simple, graceful, and readable; the erudition is easily discovered by those who seek for it, but it is not ostentatiously displayed. Scholars will appreciate it at its worth; the general reader will be grateful for the charity of the text, and for the labor that has made his path one of pleasure only.”—Saturday Evening Gazette.
A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE.
By FRANCIS, COUNT LÜTZOW,
Author of “Bohemia: An Historical Sketch.”
“This book deals with an interesting subject in an able and impartial manner, and it is written in excellent English.”—London Morning Post.
“Count Lützow’s wide and deep knowledge and experience in matters Bohemian have particularly fitted him for the preparation of this work, and he has succeeded in producing a highly interesting as well as instructive exposition of a subject altogether unknown in western Europe, and hardly more familiar in America.”—Boston Beacon.
“Students of literature will value this work, because it offers some insight into the character, the extent, and the quality of Bohemian literature extant, and the general public will find most interest in the discussion of the life and death of Hus and the principal events of his career, the life and work of Komensky, the sketch of Dobrovsky, and the long account of the enthusiastic work of the four patriots to whom the revival of Bohemian literature in the present century is due—Jungmann, Kollar, Safarik, and Palacky.”—Boston Herald.
“Count Lützow’s volume is of special value and interest.”—Philadelphia Public Ledger.