SECRET OF THE LEAGUE. Ernest Bramah.
The publishers have much pleasure in presenting this brilliant novel in a cheap form in the hope that it may secure a wide popularity. It was first published some years ago under the title of “What Might Have Been,” but the author has since considerably revised and remodelled it. It is a study of the future of our politics under a Socialistic régime. It tells how the middle and upper classes were crushed under a dead weight of taxation; how a great league was formed to combat the evil; and how victory was won by a device which is at once ingenious and convincing. In the French phrase it gives the reader furiously to think, and even those who differ from the author’s forecast will delight in the stirring narrative and the many passages of trenchant satire.
VALERIE UPTON. Miss A. D. Sedgwick.
This is a study of one type of the American young woman, who, with the phrases of self-sacrifice and idealism always upon her lips, is radically cold-hearted and selfish. It is a brilliant character study, and the repellent figure of the daughter is relieved by the gracious character of her mother—a character which is in many ways one of the most subtle and attractive in modern fiction.
FARM OF THE DAGGER. Eden Phillpotts.
Dartmoor is as much Mr. Phillpotts’s own country by right of conquest as the Scottish Borders were Sir Walter Scott’s, and Exmoor the late Mr. R. D. Blackmore’s. The present tale deals with the time of the American War and the early years of the nineteenth century. It is the study of a feud between neighbours; a grim story of passion, relieved by a charming love tale. The atmosphere of the moors is wonderfully rendered, and the men and women of the tale have borrowed from their environment a kind of spacious strength. It is also a record of action and adventure, and combines the merits of a novel of character with those of a fine romance.
EXPENSIVE MISS DU CANE. S. Macnaughtan.
This is a comedy of a country house in which a number of present-day types appear, drawn with admirable insight and a touch of kindly irony. There is tragedy in the tale, but tragedy of the kind common in our modern world, which is unspoken and scarcely realized. The heroine is singularly sympathetic and carefully studied, and no reader will be able to avoid the spell of her charm.