SIMPLICITY AND FASCINATION.
BY ANNE BEALE.
1 vol., 12mo. Elegant fancy cloth. Price $1.50.
It is not often that such a sound and yet readable English novel is republished in America.
The due mean between flashiness and dulness is hard to be attained, but we have it here.
There is neither a prosy page nor a sensational chapter in it.
It is a nice book for a clean hearth and an easy chair.
It is a natural, healthy book, written by a living person, about people of flesh and blood, who might have been our neighbors, and of events, which might happen to anybody. This is a great charm in a novel. This leaves a clean taste in the mouth, and a delicious memory of the feast.
The tone of it is high and true, without being obtrusively good. Such a book is as great a relief amid the sensational stories of the day, as a quiet little bit of "still life" is to the eye, after being blinded by the glaring colors of the French school.
This novel reproduces that exquisite tone or flavor so hard to express which permeates true English country life, and gives to it a peculiar charm unlike any other, which one having once seen and felt, lives as it were under a spell, and would never willingly allow to fade from their memory.
Too much cannot be said in praise of Simplicity and Fascination.
PIQUE:
A Tale of the English Aristocracy.
1 vol., 12mo. Elegant fancy cloth. Price $ 1.50.
Three thousand eight hundred and seventy-six new books were published in England this last year, which is about the average number of past years.
Thirteen years ago Pique was first published in London, and up to the present time, notwithstanding the enormous number of new books issued, the effect of which is to crowd the old ones out of sight, this remarkable novel has continued to have a large sale.
This is the strongest praise that can be bestowed on any book. It is not in the least "sensational," but relies solely on its rare beauty of style and truthfulness to nature for its popularity.
It has the merit of being amusing, pleasantly written, and engrossing.
The characters being high-bred men and women, are charming companions for an hour's solitude, and one puts the book aside regretfully, even as one closes the eyes on a delicious vision. The American edition has taken every one by surprise, that so remarkably good a novel should have so long escaped attention.
Every body is charmed with it, and its sale will continue for years to come.