Scene: mainly in Donegal. Relates adventures of Donegal fisherboy, first at home, then in Paris during Reign of Terror, then at battle of Camperdown, then in Dublin, where he frequents meetings of United Irishmen and meets Lord Edward. Standpoint: not anti-Irish, but hostile to aims of United Irishmen. Full of exciting adventure. Juv.
REID, Forrest.
⸺ THE BRACKNELS: a Family Chronicle. Pp. 304. (Arnold). 6s. 1911.
This unpleasant and, we hope, abnormal family is that of a self-made Belfast merchant. The book is a study in temperaments; Mr. Bracknel himself, a harsh man, with little humanness, without affection, except a certain regard for an illegitimate child of past days; the daughter Amy, in love with Rusk, the tutor, and ready to go to any lengths to win him; the wilful, selfish, elder son; above all, Denis, the youngest, morbid, dreamy, the victim of delusions, engaging in strange pagan worship, yet with amiable traits. There is not a trace of religion in the chronicle of this family.
⸺ FOLLOWING DARKNESS. Pp. 320. (Arnold). 6s. 1912.
A soul study in form of autobiography. The hero is a son of a Co. Down schoolmaster. He is brought up amid uncongenial people and in uncongenial circumstances, first amid the Mourne Mountains, then in sordid Cromac St., Belfast. His soul sickens with the dreariness of the education, and especially of the religion that is imposed on him, and the father, a hard, unresponsive man, is perversely blind to the genius (an artistic and somewhat moody temperament) and aspirations of the young man—with consequences almost fatal. He is thrown back on himself. Hence intense introspection and then an outlet sought in occult sciences. There is a love story, too, but it is of minor importance. The book is but a fragment, and has no real conclusion. The style is exceptionally good.
⸺ AT THE DOOR OF THE GATE. Pp. 332. (Arnold). 6s. 1915.
“One needs no knowledge of Belfast and its people to appreciate nine-tenths of what Mr. Reid here describes; there can be no question that his characters are true to life: the small family at the combined post office and lending library; the hardworking, clean, and grim Mrs. Seawright, her two sons Martin and Richard, her adopted daughter Grace ... all this one thoroughly appreciates as one admires the sustained skill with which in a succession of small strokes Mr. Reid builds up his admirable story.”—(Times Lit. Suppl.).
RHYS, Grace. “Mrs. Rhys (née Little) was born at Knockadoo, Boyle, Co. Roscommon, 1865. She is youngest daughter of J. Bennett Little, and married, in 1891, Ernest Rhys, the poet.... Her novels deal with Irish life, which she knows well, and are written with sympathetic insight, tenderness, and tragic power.”—(Irish Lit.).
⸺ MARY DOMINIC. Pp. 296. (Dent). 1898.