1. Gibbon, Perceval. Those Who Smiled. Cassell.
2. Mayne, Ethel Colburn. Blindman. Chapman and Hall.
3. Mordaunt, Elinor. Old Wine in New Bottles. Hutchinson.
4. O'Kelly, Seumas. The Leprechaun of Killmeen. Martin Lester.
5. Robinson, Lennox. Eight Short Stories. Talbot Press.
6. Shorter, Dora Sigerson. A Dull Day in London. Nash.
7. Lemaître, Jules. Serenus. Selwyn and Blount.
BELOW FOLLOWS A RECORD OF NINETY-TWO DISTINCTIVE VOLUMES PUBLISHED BETWEEN NOVEMBER 1, 1918, AND OCTOBER 1, 1920.
I. American Authors
The Honourable Gentlemen and Others and Wings: Tales of the Psychic, by Achmed Abdullah (G. P. Putnam's Sons, and the James A. McCann Company). In the first of these two volumes, Mr. Abdullah has gathered the Pell Street stories of New York's Chinatown which have appeared in American magazines during the past few years. As contrasted with Thomas Burke's "Limehouse Nights," these stories reflect the oriental point of view with its characteristic fatalism and equability of temper. Four of these stories are told with the utmost economy of means and a grim pleasure in watching events unshape themselves. "A Simple Act of Piety" seemed to me one of the best short stories of 1918. The other volume is of more uneven quality, and psychic stories do not furnish Mr. Abdullah with his most natural medium, but contains at least three admirable stories.
Hand-Made Fables, by George Ade. (Doubleday, Page & Company.) Mr. Ade's new series of thirty fables are a valuable record of the war years in American life. They are written in a unique idiom full of color, if unintelligible to the foreigner. I think one may fairly say that Mr. Ade's work is thoroughly characteristic of a large section of American culture, and this section he has portrayed admirably. Undoubtedly he is our best satirist.
Joy in the Morning, by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews (Charles Scribner's Sons). This uneven collection includes two admirable stories, "The Ditch" and "Dundonald's Destroyer," to which I drew attention when they first appeared in magazines. The latter is one of the best realized legends suggested by the war, while the former is technically interesting as a thoroughly successful short story written entirely in dialogue. The other stories are of slighter content, and emotionally somewhat overtaut.
Youth and the Bright Medusa, by Willa Cather (Alfred A. Knopf). Fifteen years ago, Miss Cather published a volume of short stories entitled "The Troll Garden." This volume has long been out of print, although its influence may be seen in the work of many contemporary story writers. The greater part of its contents is now reprinted in the present volume, together with four new stories of less interest. These eight studies, dealing for the most part with the artistic temperament, are written with a detached observation of life that clearly reveals the influence of Flaubert on the one hand and of Henry James on the other, but there is a quality of personal style built up out of nervous rhythms and an instinctive reticence of personal attitude which Miss Cather only shares with Sherwood Anderson among her American compatriots. She is more assured in the traditional quality of her work than Anderson, but hardly less astringent. I regard this book as one of the most important contributions to the American short story published during the past year, and personally I consider it more significant than her four admirable novels.
From Place to Place, by Irvin S. Cobb (George H. Doran Company). I have frequently had occasion to point out in the past that Mr. Cobb's work, in depth of conception and breadth of execution, makes him the legitimate successor of Mark Twain as a painter of the ampler life of the American South and Middle West. In his new collection of nine stories, there are at least three which I confidently believe are destined to last as long as the best stories of Hawthorne and Poe. The most noteworthy of these is "Boys Will Be Boys," which I printed in a previous volume of this series. "The Luck Piece" and "The Gallowsmith," though sharply contrasted in subject matter, reveal the same profound understanding of American life which makes Mr. Cobb almost our best interpreter in fiction to readers in other countries. Like Mark Twain, Mr. Cobb is quite uncritical of his own work, and two of these stories are of merely ephemeral value. I should like no better task than to edite a selection of Mr. Cobb's stories in one volume for introduction to the English public, and I think that such a volume would be the best service American letters could render to English letters at the present moment.
The Life of the Party, by Irvin S. Cobb (George H. Doran Company). I shall claim no special literary quality for this short story which Mr. Cobb has reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, but America usually shows such poverty in producing humorous stories that the infectious quality of this wildly improbable adventure makes the story seem better than it really is. It cannot be regarded as more than a diversion from Mr. Cobb's rich human studies of American life.
Hiker Joy, by James B. Connolly (Charles Scribner's Sons). This series of stories about a little New York wharf-rat which Mr. Connolly has reprinted from Collier's Weekly are less important than the admirable stories of the Gloucester fishermen which first made his reputation. They are told by the wharf-rat in dialect with a casual reportorial air which is tolerably convincing, and it is clear that they are based on a background of first-hand experience. Mr. Connolly's hand is not entirely subdued to the medium in which he has chosen to work, but the result is a certain monotony of interest.