Standard.
HANDBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY. By Frederick Martin, Author of “The Statesman’s Year-Book.” Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.
This volume is an attempt to produce a book of reference, furnishing in a condensed form some biographical particulars of notable living men. The leading idea has been to give only facts, and those in the briefest form, and to exclude opinions.
Martineau.—BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, 1852–1868. By Harriet Martineau. Third and cheaper Edition, with New Preface. Crown 8vo. 6s.
A Collection of Memoirs under these several sections:—(1) Royal, (2) Politicians, (3) Professional, (4) Scientific, (5) Social, (6) Literary. These Memoirs appeared originally in the columns of the “Daily News.”
Milton.—LIFE OF JOHN MILTON. Narrated in connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. By David Masson, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric at Edinburgh. Vol. I. with Portraits. 8vo. 18s. Vol. II. in a few days.—Vol. III. in the Press.
It is intended to exhibit Milton’s life in its connexions with all the more notable phenomena of the period of British history in which it was cast—its state politics, its ecclesiastical variations, its literature and speculative thought. Commencing in 1608, the Life of Milton proceeds through the last sixteen years of the reign of James I., includes the whole of the reign of Charles I. and the subsequent years of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, and then, passing the Restoration, extends itself to 1674, or through fourteen years of the new state of things under Charles II. The first volume deals with the life of Milton as extending from 1608 to 1640, which was the period of his education and of his minor poems.
Mitford (A. B.).—TALES OF OLD JAPAN. By A. B. Mitford, Second Secretary to the British Legation in Japan. With upwards of 30 Illustrations, drawn and cut on Wood by Japanese Artists. Two vols. crown 8vo. 21s.
This work is an attempt to do for Japan what Sir J. Davis, Dr. Legge, and M. Stanislas Julien, have done for China. Under the influence of more enlightened ideas and of a liberal system of policy, the old Japanese civilization is fast disappearing, and will, in a few years, be completely extinct. It was important, therefore, to preserve as far as possible trustworthy records of a state of society which although venerable from its antiquity, has for Europeans the dawn of novelty; hence the series of narratives and legends translated by Mr. Mitford, and in which the Japanese are very judiciously left to tell their own tale. The two volumes comprise not only stories and episodes illustrative of Asiatic superstitions, but also three sermons. The preface, appendices, and notes explain a number of local peculiarities; the thirty-one woodcuts are the genuine work of a native artist, who, unconsciously of course, has adopted the process first introduced by the early German masters.
Morley (John).—EDMUND BURKE, a Historical Study. By John Morley, B.A. Oxon. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.