Daily Telegraph—"Since the gay days when Mr. F. Anstey was writing his inimitable series of humourous novels, we can recall no book of purely farcical imagination so full of excellent entertainment as this first effort of Mr. F. J. Randall. 'Love and the Ironmonger' is certain to be a success."
Times—"As diverting a comedy of errors as the reader is likely to meet with for a considerable time."
Mr. Clement Shorter, in The Sphere—"I thank the author for a delightful hour's amusement."
THE BERMONDSEY TWIN. Crown 8vo. 6/-
⁂ A humourous story of the reappearance of a twin brother, who is supposed to be dead. Prosperous, respected, and well satisfied with himself, a suburban tradesman is contemplating matrimony and the realisation of his ambitions, when the twin brother appears. He is thrown into a state of panic, for not only is his fortune thus reduced by half and his marriage prospects endangered, but the twin is to all appearance a disreputable character, whose existence threatens to mar the tradesman's respectability. The good man's attempts to hide this undesirable brother make amusing reading, and the pranks of the unwelcome twin serve to complicate matters, for the brothers are so much alike as to be easily mistaken one for the other. The new arrival is really a man of integrity, his depravity being assumed as a joke. Having played the farce out he is about to "confess," when the tables are turned upon him by accident, and he is forced to pay heavily for his fun in a series of humiliating adventures.
BY HUGH DE SÉLINCOURT.
A FAIR HOUSE. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Author of "A Boy's Marriage," "The Way Things Happen," "The Strongest Plume."
⁂ The outstanding idea of Mr. Hugh de Sélincourt's new novel is the possibility of absolute love and confidence between father and daughter. It is the main thread of the story and all the incidents are subordinated to it. The book falls naturally into three sections. The first opens with the birth of the daughter and the death of the mother, the father's utter despair, until an idea comes to him, to make the child his masterpiece and to see how much one human being can mean to another. The second deals with the growth of the child from five to fifteen. In the third, the girl becomes a woman. Her first experience of love is unhappy and threatens to destroy the confidence between father and daughter. But she is enabled to throw herself heart and soul into stage-work, and in the excitement of work she finds herself again. And the end of the book leaves her with the knowledge that one love does not necessarily displace another, and that a second, happier love has only strengthened the bond between her father and herself.
BY ESSEX SMITH.