“The reprint is welcome and every student interested in ancient Bohemias will be delighted to hear Aston tell, with complete disregard for syntax and in the authentic pot-house style of Ned Ward and the other blackguard wits, of his amazingly varied career.”
+ Nation 112:sup246 F 9 ’21 450w
“The student of the stage and society will find his career interesting for the light it throws upon the provincial and illegitimate stage of the time, concerning which practically nothing is known.” J. W. Krutch
+ N Y Evening Post p8 N 27 ’20 380w
NICHOLSON, WATSON. Historical sources of DeFoe’s Journal of the plague year. $2 Stratford co. 942.06
DeFoe’s “Journal of the plague year” which has hitherto been classified as fiction and has been accounted as a “masterpiece of the imagination” is here proven, by the aid of extracts from original documents in the Burney collection and manuscript room of the British museum, to be “a faithful record of historical facts, that it was so intended by the author and is as nearly correct as it was humanly possible to make it from the sources and time at his command.” The contents are: Originals and parallels of the stories in DeFoe’s Journal; The historical sources of the Journal; Errors in the Journal; Summary. The appendices consist of excerpts from the original sources of the Journal and from hitherto unpublished documents illustrative of the plague. There is a bibliography.
Outlook 125:281 Je 9 ’20 90w Spec 124:834 Je 19 ’20 400w Springf’d Republican p8 Jl 23 ’20 240w
“Dr Watson Nicholson’s book suffers a little from the researcher’s usual impatience with those who preceded him; a little more from his sometimes odd and slack English; more still from careless proof-reading. But those who are interested in DeFoe should read the book, because the author does more than work his case out closely.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p418 Jl 1 ’20 800w