“A rather poorly balanced miscellany of poems. The volume is by no means representative of Mr Bynner’s excellence as a lyric poet. In comparatively few pieces in the present collection does he approach his highest standard of workmanship. A number of them are trivial in conception and detract substantially from the merit of the others.”
− + Springf’d Republican p11a S 5 ’20 430w
BYRNE, DONN. Foolish matrons. *$1.90 (2c) Harper
20–18252
The heroines of the story are four: one wise and three foolish. The wise one was a great actress who married the big uncouth surgeon whom she loved, gave up her career and became his guardian angel and mother of his children. Georgia, pretty and frivolous, craved the excitement of gay New York. Married she was a vampire and finally drifted to the underworld. Sheila, the college graduate and newspaper woman, clever and heartless, dreamt of a career, married a poet for the glamor of it and drove him to drink with her coldness. Sappho, the model, frankly married for money, and posed as patroness of amateur artists. She became ashamed of her plain millionaire husband and thought to do better for herself but lost in the game.
“There is enough material in ‘The foolish matrons’ for four novels; any one of the biographies which are told simultaneously would have made a book by itself—a book representing with true artistry a segment of life.”
+ N Y Times p24 O 10 ’20 600w
“The tale has vivid elements: it is overdrawn, but possesses dramatic intensity.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p9a N 14 ’20 150w