20–9428
In a foreword the author tells something of the conditions under which his poems have been written. He learned English after the age of nineteen, published his first book of verse in English, with an introduction by Israel Zangwill, in London in 1914, and has since come to New York where he now makes his home. The poems are in five groups: Love and longing; Autumn flowers; Echoes of exile; Chequered shadow; The dawn of a nation. Some of the poems in the third group, such as To free Russia (1917), The Torah and “No news” are racial in theme, but the one purely Jewish section of the book is the concluding one, devoted to the Zionist ideal.
“Despite Israel Zangwill’s opinion that ‘the best of Mr Raskin’s poems might have been written by Robert Browning,’ there is much in them that is merely ‘pretty work’—though the same thing might be said, heaven knows, of the famous Victorian poet. In fact, the first of this volume, dealing, as it does, with love, is fairly puerile. But toward the end of the volume we happen upon a collection of poems entitled ‘The dawn of a nation’ which contains one or two verses worth while. The one poem which makes the collection notable is that called ‘After the British declaration.’”
+ − Boston Transcript p6 S 8 ’20 380w
RAVEN, CHARLES E. Christian socialism, 1848–1854. *$6.50 Macmillan 335.7
“This work is based on the Donellan lectures delivered by the author, who is dean of Emmanuel college, Cambridge, at Trinity college, Dublin, in May, 1919. It traces the ‘Christian socialist’ movement from its origin in the reaction against the ‘laissez faire’ principles of the early 19th century to the apparent failure of the effects of Maurice, Neale and Ludlow in 1853, after the passing of Slaney’s act, which gave recognition to the cooperative movement. The concluding chapter deals with the ‘Foundation of the working men’s college’ after the breakdown of the earlier hopes of the Christian socialists.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
“The volume as a whole is a genuine contribution to English economic history and will doubtless be received as such. Mr Raven would have been a little more convincing in some parts if he had been less profuse in praising his heroes and at the same time had shown more charity for Mrs Sidney Webb and other critics of the Christian Socialists.”
+ Nation 112:sup247 F 9 ’21 410w