Aumonier, Stacy.
*Friends, The, and Two Other Stories. Century.
"Ayscough, John."
*French Windows. Longmans.
Barlow, Jane.
*Irish Idylls. Dodd, Mead.
Bell, J. J.
Cupid in Oilskins. Revell.
*Kiddies. Stokes.
Benson, Edward Frederic.
Freaks of Mayfair, The. Doran.
Blackwood, Algernon.
*Day and Night Stories. Dutton.
Burke, Thomas.
*Limehouse Nights. McBride.
Corkery, Daniel.
*Munster Twilight, A. Stokes.
Cunninghame Graham, R. B.
*Brought Forward. Stokes.
*Charity. Stokes.
*Faith. Stokes.
*Hope. Stokes.
*Progress. Stokes.
*Success. Stokes.
Curle, Richard.
*Echo of Voices. Knopf.
Dawson, Coningsby.
*Seventh Christmas, The. Holt.
Dell, Ethel M.
Safety Curtain, The. Putnam.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan.
His Last Bow. Doran.
Dunsany, Lord.
*Dreamer's Tales, A. Boni and Liveright.
*Fifty-one Tales. Little, Brown.
Evans, Caradoc.
*My People. Duffield.
Gate, Ethel M.
*Broom Fairies, The. Yale Univ. Press.
Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson.
*Collected Poems. Macmillan.
Hall, Mordaunt.
Some Naval Yarns. Doran.
Harrison, Cuthbert Woodville.
*Magic of Malaya, The. Lane.
Howard, Keble.
Smiths in War Time, The. Lane.
Jerome, Jerome K.
Street of the Blank Wall, The. Dodd, Mead.
Kipling, Rudyard.
*Diversity of Creatures, A. Doubleday, Page.
Machen, Arthur.
*Terror, The. McBride.
Mason, A. E. W.
*Four Corners of the World, The. Scribner.
Newbolt, Sir Henry.
*Happy Warrior, The. Longmans, Green.
Tales of the Great War. Longmans, Green.
Peacocke, E. M.
Dicky, Knight-Errant. McBride.
Phillpotts, Eden.
*Girl and the Faun, The. Lippincott.
Ransome, Arthur.
*Old Peter's Russian Tales. Stokes.
Rendall, Vernon Horace.
London Nights of Belsize, The. Lane.
"Rohmer, Sax."
Hand of Fu-Manchu, The. McBride.
"Sapper."
*No Man's Land. Doran.
Stacpoole, H. De Vere.
Sea Plunder. Lane.
Swinton, Lieut.-Col. E. D.
Great Tab Dope, The. Doubleday, Page.
"Taffrail."
Sea Spray and Spindrift. Lippincott.
Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm.
Nothing Matters. Houghton-Mifflin.
Wren, Percival C.
Young Stagers. Longmans, Green.

III. Translations

Apukhtin, A. (Russian.)
*From Death to Life. Frank.
Artzibashev, Michael Mikhailovich. (Russian.)
*Tales of the Revolution. Huebsch.
Cervantes, Miguel de. (Spanish.)
*Rinconete and Cortadillo. Four Seas.
Chekhov, Anton. (Russian.) (See Tchekhov, Anton.)
*Christmas Tales of Flanders. (Belgian.) Dodd, Mead.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich. (Russian.)
*Eternal Husband, The. Macmillan.
*Gambler, and Other Stories, The. Macmillan.
France, Anatole. (French.)
*Girls and Boys. Duffield.
*Our Children. Duffield.
Géraldy, Paul. (French.)
*The War, Madame. Scribner.
Ispirescu, Petre. (Rumanian.)
*Foundling Prince, The. Houghton-Mifflin.
Kuprin, Alexander Ivanovich. (Russian.)
*Bracelet of Garnets, The. Scribner.
Maupassant, Guy de. (French.)
*Mademoiselle Fifi. Boni and Liveright.
*Second Odd Number, The. Harper.
Seltzer, Thomas, Editor. (Russian.)
*Best Russian Short Stories, The. Boni and Liveright.
*Shield, The. (Russian.) Knopf.
Strindberg, August. (Swedish.)
*Married. Boni and Liveright.
Sudermann, Hermann. (German.)
*Dame Care. Boni and Liveright.
Tchekhov, Anton. (Russian.)
*Duel, The. Macmillan.
*House with the Mezzanine, The. Scribner.
*Lady with the Dog, The. Macmillan.
*Party, The. Macmillan.
*Rothschild's Fiddle. Boni and Liveright.
*Will o' the Wisp. International Authors' Association.
Tolstoi, Ilya, Count.
*Visions. Pond.
Wright, Willard Huntington, Editor. (French.)
*Great Modern French Stories, The. Boni and Liveright.

THE BEST SIXTY-THREE AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF 1917

The sixty-three short stories published in the American magazines during 1917 which I shall discuss in this article are chosen from a larger group of about one hundred and twenty-five stories, whose literary excellence justified me in including them in my annual "Roll of Honor." The stories, which are included in this Roll of Honor have been chosen from the stories published in about sixty-five American periodicals during 1917. In selecting them, I have sought to accept the author's point of view and manner of treatment, and to measure simply the degree of success he had in doing what he set out to achieve. But I must confess that it has been difficult to eliminate personal admiration completely in the further winnowing which has resulted in this selection of sixty-three stories. Below are set forth the particular qualities which have seemed to me to justify in each case the inclusion of a story in this list.

1. The Excursion by Edwina Stanton Babcock (The Pictorial Review) is in my belief one of the best five American short stories of the year. It is significant because of its faithful and imaginative rendering of American folk-life, because of its subtle characterization, and the successful manner in which it reveals the essentially racy humor of the American countryside with the utmost economy of means. The characterization is achieved almost entirely through dialogue, and the portraiture of the characters is rendered inimitably in a phrase or two. In this story, as well as in "The Band," Miss Babcock has earned the right to a place beside Francis Buzzell as a regional story writer, fairly comparable to John Trevena's renderings of Dartmoor.

2. The Brothers by Thomas Beer (The Century Magazine) will remind the reader in some respects of Frederick Stuart Greene's story, "The Black Pool," published in "The Grim 13." But apart from a superficial resemblance in the substance with which both writers deal, the two stories are more notable in their differences than in their resemblances. If "The Brothers" is less inevitable than "The Black Pool," it is perhaps a more sophisticated work of art, and I am not sure but that its conclusion and the resolution of character that it involves is not more artistically convincing than the end of "The Black Pool." It is certainly a memorable first story by a new writer and would of itself be enough to make a reputation. Mr. Beer is the most original new talent that the Century Magazine has discovered since Stacy Aumonier.

3. Onnie by Thomas Beer (The Century Magazine) has a certain stark faithfulness which makes of somewhat obvious material an extremely vivid and freshly felt rendering of life. There is a certain quality of observation in the story which we are accustomed to think of as a Gallic rather than an American trait. I think that Mr. Beer has slightly broadened his canvas where greater restraint and less cautious use of suggestion would have better answered his purpose. But "Onnie" is a better story than "The Brothers" to my mind, and Mr. Beer, by virtue of these two stories, is one of the two or three most interesting new talents of the year.

4. Ironstone by Phyllis Bottome (The Century Magazine). To those who have enjoyed in recent years the admirable social comedy and deft handling of English character to which Miss Bottome has accustomed us, "Ironstone" must have come as a surprise in its revelation of a new aspect in the author's talent, akin to the kind of tale which is found at its best as a "middle" in the London Nation. It compresses the emotion of a Greek drama into a space of perhaps four thousand words. I find that the closing dialogue in this story is as certain in its march as the closing pages of "Riders to the Sea," and the katharsis is timeless in its final solution.