Translated from the Russian by R. Nisbet Bain. With Biography brought up to date, and Photogravure Portrait of Count Leo Tolstoi. 6s.
Tales from Tolstoi.
(Fourth Edition.)
Translated from the Russian by R. Nisbet Bain. With Portrait and Biography of Count Leo Tolstoi. 6s.
Tales from Gorky.
(Sixth Edition.)
Translated from the Russian of Maxim Gorky by R. Nisbet Bain. With Photogravure Portrait and Biography of Author. 6s.
London
Jarrold & Sons
10 & 11, Warwick Lane, E.C.
PREFACE
Besides his romances, Jókai has, from time to time, published volumes of shorter stories which, in the opinion of many good Magyar critics, contain some of his most notable work. The present selection will enable English readers to judge of the merits of these stories for the first time. It does not profess to be the best selection which might be made. Many excellent tales could not be included within its narrow limits; others again, equally good, suit Hungarian rather than British taste. But, anyhow, it claims to be fairly representative, and to give a taste of the many widely differing qualities of the most Protean of romancers. Numbers I. and IX., for instance, are models of what historical tales should be, and could only have been written by an author gifted with the historical imagination; Numbers II. and V. are light comic sketches; Number VIII. is a ghost story which Dickens might have written; Numbers III. and IV. are narratives of a grimmer order, with touches of horror not unworthy of the author of "Pretty Michal;" Number VI. is a faithful and picturesque narrative of social life in old Poland—evidently studied with care; while in Number VII. Jókai gives full rein to his wondrous imagination, and his Pegasus actually carries the reader right away to the capital of the lost island of Atlantis!