STORIES FROM “THE EARTHLY PARADISE.”
By WILLIAM MORRIS.
Retold in Prose by C. S. EVANS.
Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6s.
It is through our natural love of a story that we are led to appreciate the highest and best in literature. This is Mr. Evans’s justification for his collection of stories from William Morris’s most characteristic work, just as it was Charles Lamb’s for his famous tales from Shakespeare. Morris based most of his poems upon legends well known in other versions—some of the world’s best stories indeed—and it is hoped that the book will be read with interest for the stories themselves, and that it may also serve as an introduction to the work of the poet. With the latter object in view, Mr. Evans has reproduced, as far as possible, the poet’s own imagery, and has not been dismayed by the fact that, in the change from poetry to prose, that imagery may seem sometimes disproportionate and high-flown.
The stories included are “Atalanta’s Race,” “The Son of Crœsus,” “The Man Born to be King,” “The Love of Alcestis,” “The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” “The Man Who Never Laughed Again,” “The Proud King,” “The Writing on the Image,” “The Story of Rhodope,” “Ogier the Dane,” “The Doom of King Acrisius,” and “The Lady of the Land.”
AT THE DOOR OF THE GATE.
By FORREST REID,
Author of “Following Darkness,” “The Bracknells,” “The Gentle Lover,” etc.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
This is the most elaborate and finished piece of work its author has yet given us. The history of a young man’s life, it begins with his schooldays and follows him through the years of early manhood and of marriage, the picture being presented largely through his relations with three women, each of whom reflects the principal character from a different point of view. The study of middle-class life, in its aspects of alternate comedy and tragedy, is painted on a broader canvas than the author has hitherto employed, but the central theme is followed closely, for from the first the hero is confronted by a spiritual reality which, while perpetually eluding him, seems ever about to come within his grasp. And in the last chapters it is this which gives a meaning to all that has gone before, so that we leave him, if not at the end of his journey, at least with the open door within sight, and the light shining beyond.