Reviewed by Louise Collier Willcox.
+ – North American. 182: 755. My. ’06. 290w.
Austin, Mrs. Mary Hunter. The flock; il. by E. Boyd Smith. **$2. Houghton.
Mrs. Austin’s flock is a literal flock of sheep. “This is a sort of epic of the sheep pastures. She begins with a sort of New Englandish landmark, the year of the Boston massacre, which was also the year Daniel Boone moved into the West east of the Mississippi, but the country of her pasture is the Pacific slope, where she has lived among the herders and their woolly charges. Mrs. Austin tells of the work of these herders in the mountain valleys, in rain and drought, of the shearing baile, of the dogs, of the struggle for the control of the feeding grounds. She tells how the wild beasts come down upon the fold or the grazing flock, and how the sheep are protected by the faithful shepherds. There are stories, too, of individual shepherds who have had adventures, an account of a particular old California sheep range, and a chapter on ‘The sheep and the forest reserves.’” (N. Y. Times.)
“The poetic temperament which so well fits Mrs. Austin for writing stories of the West has been of equal advantage to her in telling of the shepherd-life with ‘its background of wild beauty, mixed romance, and unaffected savagery.’” May Estelle Cook.
+ Dial. 41: 388. D. 1, ’06, 290w.
“The charm of the whole lies in three qualities: the novelty and interest of the subject, the picturesque texture of the author’s mind, and in a style which is both cultivated and racy, and adapted to conveying her unusual sense of beauty.”
+ Nation. 83: 489. D. 6, ’06. 720w.
“As a matter of fact the sheep are only an excuse for an outdoor book which takes on a certain pastoral stamp because of them, but rejoices chiefly in the open—the free earth, the sun, and the wind.”