JACOBS, EDWIN ELMORE.[[2]] Study of the physical vigor of American women; pref. by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. $1.50 Jones, Marshall 612

The author presents the results of some statistical studies made among college women. The outcome of the study is to show “that there is no real evidence of the decline in the physical vigor of the women of America.” And arguing that “the male half of the population of a country can neither be very far ahead or behind the female part in its general health,” he holds that his conclusions may apply to the population as a whole. The investigation was carried out along four lines: fertility, longevity, anthropological measurements and women’s athletics. There is a five-page list of references.

Booklist 17:99 D ’20

JACOBSEN, JENS PETER. Niels Lyhne; tr. from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen. (Scandinavian classics) $2 (2½c) Am.-Scandinavian foundation

20–1700

A novel by the author of “Marie Grubbe.” It has been called a spiritual autobiography and in her introduction the translator sketches the relation of the novel to Jacobsen’s own life. It is the story of a dreamer who always falls short in his contacts with reality. Niels Lyhne’s mother spends her life in one long day dream, broken by disillusionments from which she hastens to take refuge in still further dreams. The infusion of this temperament in her son, though mixed with his father’s sterner stuff, renders all his efforts futile. The story opens with a beautiful account of Niels’s childhood with its friendship for two boy companions, and is carried through two love episodes, and a short period of happy marriage to his death in the war of 1864.

“The novel has the quality of a late autumn afternoon, a windless, tranquil hour of waiting, when both strong desire and strong regret are absent, and when in a mood of reverie and forgiveness we let the world glide from us. A sense of something honey-sweet, faded, and delicate pervades it. How deeply Jacobsen was the literary artist the Larsen translation unfortunately little reveals. Though it is more faithful to the original than the general run of translations to which we here in America have become accustomed, its prosiness and stiffness, its air of being all too patently the translation, prevent it from representing Jacobsen quite fairly.” Paul Rosenfeld

+ − Dial 68:644 My ’20 2150w