WIND ON THE HEATH. Crown 8vo. 6/-
⁂ No paragraph or descriptive note can give an idea of Miss Essex Smith's story. It depends upon style, psychology, woodland atmosphere, and more than anything else upon originality of outlook. It will make a direct appeal to that public that has a taste for the unusual. There is underlying it a tone of passion, the passion of a fantastic Richard Jefferies.
BY GEORGE STEVENSON.
TOPHAM'S FOLLY. A Novel. Crown 8vo. 6/-
⁂ This novel has the curious charm of a tale that might be told to you by your own mother or grandmother, a homeliness and simplicity which is never overweighted by the writer's very considerable skill in presenting his story. The scene is laid in a small town in the West Riding of Yorkshire—fortunately there is practically no dialect. What the narrator presents to us is supposed to be the incidents of the lives of various members of the Topham family and their kinsfolk seen largely through the eyes of Mary Ann. Mary Ann's mother was a woman of good family, who in her early teens eloped with her father's groom, and although in consequence of her act she endured many hardships, she never repented it. When Mary Ann was just growing into young womanhood she discovered an advertisement in a newspaper enquiring for the heirs of Thomas Morton Bagster, and pointed it out to her mother. They consult Mr. Topham, the lawyer, who undertakes to make enquiries for them. Topham is at this time very short of cash, and cannot complete a grand new house for himself and his family, over whom he rules as a petty domestic tyrant. From now on the financial fortunes of the Tophams prosper, and the house, which has begun to be known as "Topham's Folly," is completed and occupied. And in this tempestuous household lives Mary Ann as a humble servant—a kind of angel in a print dress. When the youngest boy is about twenty he suddenly discovers by the purest chance the whole fraud upon which the family fortunes have been erected. There are innumerable side issues, every one of them fascinatingly human and delightfully told.
BY HERMANN SUDERMANN.
THE SONG OF SONGS (Das Hohe Lied). Crown 8vo. 6/-
A new Translation by Beatrice Marshall.
⁂ The first English translation of this work, published under the title of "The Song of Songs," proved to be too American for the taste of the British public, and was eventually dropped. But it was felt that the work was too great an one not to be represented in the English language, and accordingly this entirely new translation has been made, which it is hoped will fairly represent the wonderful original without unduly offending the susceptibilities of the British public. In this colossal novel, Sudermann has made a searching and masterly study of feminine frailty. The character and career of Lily Czepanck are depicted with such pitiless power and unerring psychological insight, that the portrait would be almost intolerable in its realism, if it were not for its touches of humour and tenderness. In these pages too may be found some of Sudermann's most characteristic and charming passages descriptive of country life, while his pictures of Berlin Society in all its phases, the glimpses he gives us into what goes on beneath the tinsel, spick and span surface of the great modern capital are drawn with Tolstoyan vigour and colour.