Day and Night Stories by Algernon Blackwood (E. P. Dutton & Co.). In these fifteen short stories Mr. Blackwood has adequately maintained the quality of his best previous animistic work. To those who found a new imaginative world in "The Centaur" and "Pan's Garden," the old familiar magic still has power in many of these stories,—almost completely in "The Touch of Pan" and "Initiation." Hardly inferior to these stories for their passionate reality are "The Other Wing," "The Occupant of the Room," "The Tryst," and "H. S. H." There is no story in this volume which would not have made the reputation of a new writer, and I can hardly find a better introduction than "Day and Night Stories" to the beauty of Mr. Blackwood's imaginative life. He serves the same altar of beauty in our day that John Keats served a century ago, and I cannot but believe that his magic will gain greater poignancy as generations pass.
The Derelict by Phyllis Bottome (The Century Co.). This collection of Miss Bottome's short stories, many of which have previously appeared in the Century Magazine during the past two years, gives a more complete revelation of her talent than either of her novels. I suspect that the short story is her true literary medium, and certainly there are at least six of these eight short stories which I should be compelled to list with three stars in my annual Roll of Honor. In subject and mood they range from tragedy to social comedy. Elsewhere in this volume I have discussed "'Ironstone,'" which seems to me the best of these stories. A subtle irony pervades them, but it is so definitely concealed that its insistence is never evident.
Old Christmas, and Other Kentucky Tales in Verse by William Aspenwall Bradley (The Houghton-Mifflin Co.). In this series of vignettes in verse Mr. Bradley has presented the Kentucky mountaineer as imaginatively as Robert Frost has presented the farmer-folk of New Hampshire in "North of Boston" and "Mountain Interval." The racy humor of these narratives is thoroughly indigenous, and Mr. Bradley's work has a vivid dramatic power which challenges successfully a comparison with the stories of John Fox, Jr. These poems prove Mr. Bradley's rightful claim to be the first adequate imaginative interpreter of the people who live in the Cumberland Mountains.
The Fighting Men by Alden Brooks (Charles Scribner's Sons). Of these six stories four have been published in Collier's Weekly during the past two years, and elsewhere I have had occasion to comment upon their excellence. These narratives may be regarded as separate cantos of a war epic, which is fairly comparable for its vividness of portrayal to Stephen Crane's masterpiece, "The Red Badge of Courage." Few writers, other than these two, have been able to portray the naked ugliness of warfare, and the passions which warfare engenders, with more brutal power. Time alone will tell whether these stories have a chance of permanence, but I am disposed to rank them with that other portrait of the mercilessness of war, "Under Fire," by Henri Barbusse.
Limehouse Nights by Thomas Burke (Robert M. McBride & Co.). These colorful stories of life in London's Chinatown are in my humble belief destined never to grow old. This volume is the most important volume of short stories by a new English writer to appear during 1917, and is only surpassed by Daniel Corkery's volume "A Munster Twilight." Such patterned prose in fiction has not been known since the days of Walter Pater, and Mr. Burke's sense of the almost intolerable beauty of ugly things has a persuasive fascination for the reader who may have a strong prejudice against his subjects. Such horror as Mr. Burke has imagined is almost impossible to portray convincingly, yet the author has softened its starkness into patterns of gracious beauty and musical rhythmic speech.
Rinconete and Cortadillo by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, translated from the Spanish by Mariano J. Lorente, with a preface by R. B. Cunninghame Graham (The Four Seas Co.). This is an excellent translation by a Spanish man of letters of what is perhaps the best exemplary Novel by Cervantes. As Mr. Cunninghame Graham points out in his delightful introduction, "Rinconete and Cortadillo" is perhaps the best sketch of Spanish low-life that has come down to us. It is highly amoral, despite its sub-title, and all the more delightful perhaps on that account. I hope that the translator may be persuaded, if the volume goes into the second edition it so richly deserves, to omit his very contentious preface, which can be of interest only to himself and two other people. Then our delight in this volume would be complete.
The Duel (Macmillan), The House with the Mezzanine (Scribner), The Lady with the Dog (Macmillan), The Party (Macmillan), and Rothschild's Fiddle (Boni and Liveright) by Anton Chekhov. To The Darling, which was the first volume, so far as I know, of Chekhov, to be presented to the American public, five new collections of Chekhov's tales have been added during the past year in excellent English renderings. Three of these volumes are translated by Constance Garnett, whose superb translations of Turgenieff and Dostoievsky are well known to American readers. Because Chekhov ranks with Poe and De Maupassant as one of the three supreme masters of the short story, it is a matter of signal importance that these translations should appear, and in them every mood of Russian life is reflected with subtle artistry and a passionate reality of creative vision. Chekhov is destined to exert greater and greater influence on the American short story as the translations of his work increase, and these five volumes prove him to be fully equal to Dostoievsky in sustained and varied spiritual observation. These stories range through the entire gamut of human emotion from sublime tragedy to the richest and most golden comedy. If I were to choose a single author of short stories for my library on a desert island, my choice would inevitably turn to these volumes.
Those Times and These by Irvin S. Cobb (George H. Doran Co.). This is quite the best volume of short stories that Mr. Cobb has yet published. Since "The Escape of Mr. Trimm," which was his first short story, was printed in the Saturday Evening Post seven years ago, Mr. Cobb's literary development has been rapid, if not sure; but he may now with this volume lay claim fairly to the mantle of Mark Twain for the rich humanity with which he has endowed his substance and the inimitable humor of his characterizations. In "The Family Tree" and "Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom" Mr. Cobb has added two stories of permanent value to American literature, and in "Mr. Felsburg Gets Even" and "And There Was Light" Mr. Cobb's literary art is almost as well sustained. My only quarrel with him in this book is for the inclusion of "A Kiss for Kindness," where a fine short-story possibility seems to have been entirely missed by the author, perhaps because, as he ingenuously confessed shortly afterward, he had just become an abandoned farmer.
Running Free by James B. Connolly (Charles Scribner's Sons). Of the ten short stories included by Mr. Connolly in this collection, four are among the best he has ever written: "Breath O' Dawn," "The Sea-Birds," "The Medicine Ship," and "One Wireless Night." With the simplicity of speech which characterizes all of Mr. Connolly's work, he relates his story for the story's sake. Because he is an Irishman he is an incorrigible romanticist, and I suspect that characterization interests him for the story's sake rather than for itself alone. But now that Richard Harding Davis is dead, I suppose that James B. Connolly may fairly take his place as our best born yarner, with all a yarner's privileges.
Teepee Neighbors by Grace Coolidge (The Four Seas Co.). This quiet little book of narratives and Indian portraits by Miss Coolidge deserves more attention than it has yet received, and for its qualities of quiet pathos and sympathetic insight into the Indian character I associate it as of equal value with Margaret Prescott Montague's stories of blind children in West Virginia.