OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
WELLS, GARDNER, DARTON & Co. publish a very good selection of tales for young people. Among the best are Tom's Opinion, a boy whose ever readily-expressed opinion is made to change pretty often; and Halt! by the same author. The title is suggestive of military manoeuvres, but it's only a term for obeying quickly, which is hard to do sometimes. Gregory of the Foretop, Abbot's Cleeve, and Going for a Soldier, are three books containing several stories suitable to mere grown-up young people,—so the sooner they grow up the better for the sale of the books. They are all edited by J. ERSKINE CLARKE, M.A.
FREDERICK WARNE & CO. give us Young England's Nursery Tales, illustrated by CONSTANCE HASLEWOOD. Noah's Ark, by DARLBY DALE, which is not the Ark of the nursery, but a story of the Norfolk Broads. Perhaps "Norfolk Broads" would have suggested stories that could not be told in a drawing-room. As to Bits about Horses for Every Day, selected and illustrated by S. TURNER,—well, what would horses be without "bits?" These are not tit-bits. Might do for a Bridle gift.
The Love of a Lady, by Miss ANNIE THOMAS, otherwise Mrs. PENDER CUDLIP, like most of this authoress's novels, is full of interest. It is in the regulation three volumes, but appears as if it had wished to be in two, and would have been had not large type insisted upon the addition of a third tome. The love of a lady is transferred, during the course of the story, from an artist, who appears in the last chapter "in threadbare clothes, with broken, patched boots on his feet" (not on his Hands, bien entendu), to a "well-tailored" novelist. As the lady to whom "the love" originally belonged was "a popular illustrator," it was only natural that the question of appearances should play an important part in determining its ultimate destination.
Mr. W. OUTRAM TRISTRAM is never so much in his element as when he revels in gore and guilt. In Locusta, in one bulky volume, he tells of "the crime" and "the chastisement." The first is associated with "a house with curtained windows," "an Italian swordsman," "entombed," and "a maimed lion," and the second is developed in chapters headed, "The Hunter lets fly a Poisoned Shaft," "The Silver Dish of Tarts," "The First Victim Falls," "A Dreadful Accuser," and last, but not least, "The Vengeance is Crowned." As the story begins in 1612, and ends with the words, "HENRY, Prince of WALES, art thou not avenged?" it will be seen, that Mr. W. OUTRAM TRISTRAM has seized this opportunity to pleasantly illustrate an incident from English history.
My faithful "Co." has been revelling in the Land of Fancy. He expresses delight at two books called respectively, Dreams by French Firesides and English Fairy Tales. The first is supposed to have been written before Paris in 1870-71 by a German soldier who had turned his thoughts to his home and children in the far-off Fatherland. The second deals with British folk-lore, and is racy of the soil. Both works are full of capital illustrations. He has, moreover, read He Went for a Soldier, the WYNTER Annual of JOHN STRANGE of that ilk. But what had the soldier done, that "he" should "go for him"? The answer to this conundrum will be ascertained on reading the book. Nutshell Novels, by J. ASHBY STERRY, is also a volume that repays perusal. The Lazy Poet has turned his leisure to good account—the stories he tells are excellent.
Had the delightfully original Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass, never been written, I doubt much if we should ever have seen Maggie in Mythica, by F.B. DOVETON, who announces it apologetically, as "his first"—perhaps it maybe his "unique" fairy story,—and he adds, that he has "kept out of the beaten track as far as possible." "As far as possible" is good, for never was there such an example of the "sincerest flattery" than in this undeniable imitation of Alice in Wonderland. Some of the illustrations, by J. HARRINGTON WILSON, are not quite as weak as the text, while the best of them only serve to heighten our appreciation of "Our" Mr. TENNIEL's pictures in Alice, and its companion volume. But the very title, Maggie in Mythica, recalls at once Alice in Wonderland, but the lovers of Alice, who being attracted by this title may purchase this book under the impression that "it is the same concern," will soon find out their mistake, though it may perhaps amuse a very much younger generation who know not Alice, if such a generation exist, which muchly we beg to doubt. BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & Co.
