Search

The article discusses the book "The Papers and Biography of Lion Gardiner, 1599-1663," with an Appendix, edited, with notes critical and illustrative, by Curtiss C. Gardiner. The book points out a defect which gentlemen of leisure are apt to overlook-namely, that a useless book is worse than nothing. In the present case, out of the hundred pages of the book, only two have any value - namely, those which give a list of the proprietors of Gardiner's Island and the pedigree of the author's own line. The theme is an interesting one and in the hands of a local antiquary, it would doubtless have been productive.

Presents letters to the editor. Response to a book review by Bruce Franklin; Critical appreciation of Tom Wells's biography of Daniel Ellsberg; Reference to errors in the book "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement."

This article presents information on the book "The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst," by David Nasaw. David Nasaw thrusts Hearst back onto historical center stage in a rich and subtle new biography. The book is challenging the people to rethink Hearst's legacy. The first biographer to have access to the Hearst family archives, Nasaw uses an ocean of new material to drown half-truths, quash rumors and take much closer to Hearst's concrete persona and activities. William Randolph Hearst was born in 1863 in San Francisco, California, the only child of George Hearst, a barely literate mining speculator who rarely changed his shirt and liked to hang around with mining-camp rowdies, however rich he became, and Phoebe Apperson Hearst, a small-town music teacher and proper lady.

This article presents information on publication of books included in this issue. Some of them are as follows: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.'s list includes, "New France and New England,' by John Fiske, the last link in the chain of his historical series down to the adoption of the Constitution; "Lee at Appomattox, and Other Papers," by Charles Francis Adams; "Charles Eliot," a biography of this lamented landscape architect, with some exemplification of his art; and "The Life of John Ruskin,' by W.G. Collingwood.

The article provides information on two books on poet and writer Emily Dickinson. The book "Emily Dickinson. An Interpretive Biography," is written by Thomas H. Johnson, and the book "The Poems of Emily Dickinson," edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Dickinson died in 1886,at the age of fifty-six, leaving six published poems her "papers," and many letters scattered among her various correspondents. Dickinson's papers were mainly in the form of "packets," impromptu booklets made by folding sheets of writing paper and stitching them together at the fold. Dickinson had passed through a creative burst unparalleled in the history of lyric poetry. For what Johnson centrally attests is what every well-engaged reader knows--that the biography of a poet is his poems, once people have learned to read them.

The article sketches the life of Erwin Knoll in the biography "An Enemy of the State." Knoll, editor of "the Progressive" until his death in 1994, subscribed to no party doctrine and was never an ideologue, but he did take an absolutist stance on three issues: war, which he always opposed, free speech, which he always championed and electoral politics, which he viewed as hopelessly divorced from the actual concerns of ordinary people. Revolted by the horrors of state sponsored violence and convinced there was no such thing as a "just war," he became a strict pacifist- an unusual position for a Jewish survivor of World War II. state, Knoll became an outspoken critic of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

This article presents information on several books that will be published by various publishers in the coming days and months. It is informed that Fordham University press will shortly be publishing a book titled "Makers of Electricity" which will contain biographies of eminent electricians. It is also informed that sometime around this month only, B.W. Huebsch will be publishing the book "India, Impressions and Suggestions," by J. Kier Hardie. It is also brought to the notice of the readers that John Lane Co. will be publishing the book "Seekers in Sicily," by Elizabeth Bisland and Anne Hoyt in the month of September 1909.

The article presents information on literary publications. The announcement that John D. Rockefeller will begin in October to contribute to the World's Work his "Random Reminiscences of Men and Events," has caused some talk. The forthcoming number of the Dublin Review contains an article on Percy Bysshe Shelley by the late Francis Thompson, found among his papers. The essay is said to reveal unknown powers in Thompson as a writer of prose. The Frank Allaben Genealogical Company of this city announces a series of biographies of distinguished Americans.

The article focuses on the literary works of American writers, who are mainly focusing on the lives of British writers. In the last twenty years most of the new standard lives of English authors have come, not merely from the U.S., but specifically from American universities. Understandably, the British are not excessively happy about all this as they show every time an English literary paper reviews, with a mixture of annoyance and admiration, an American biography of a British author. In England, the study of literature traditionally has been in the hands of gifted men of leisure, or men of affairs whose avocation was books.

The article presents information about the book "The Life of Olive Schreiner," by S.C. Cronwright-Schreiner. Cronwright-Schreiner's biography of his wife, whose name he took at her request when they were married, has been awaited with mixed emotions by all those who knew her. They realized that Olive's husband, whom she had loved most tenderly up to the last moment of her life and who held possession of all her papers, journals etc. should in the nature of things possess, as no one else could, the material and the knowledge necessary to create the illusion of her presence.

This article focuses on the books "Anne Frank: The Biography," "Who Owns Anne Frank?," "The Diary of Anne Frank," "Dreams of Anne Frank," "Anne Frank and Me," and "The Model Apartment." In a passionate and misguided essay in the journal "The New Yorker," last fall, the novelist and critic Cynthia Ozick asked the important question regarding the book "Who Owns Anne Frank." Ozick excoriates all those who have attempted to engage with it, judging them inept, rapacious and indecent. The book "Dreams of Anne Frank," has access to more performance energy and is staged at a higher "pitch" than its fifties predecessor, in addition, youth may be exposed to Anne Frank for the first time through this production.

The article discusses books like "Walter Benjamin: A Biography," by Momme Brodersen and "Benjamin's Crossing," by Jay Parini. Benjamin is said to have been a shy and awkward man, yet there was something about him that made people want to take his picture. One of the nicest things about Momme Brodersen's lavishly illustrated biography is that, more than half a century after Benjamin's death, American readers can finally get a good look at his face.

Presents several letters to the editor. Information related to Gaspar Portala, a governor of California; Overview of an expedition led by Gaspar Portala; Desires of friends of the psychical researcher Richard Hodgson, to collect material for his biography.

The article discusses books and authors. Fourteen or fifteen sometime pupils of educator Burt Green Wilder, of more than three thousand he has instructed in the past quarter of a century, have made contributions to a memorial for the twenty-fifth year of his professorship. The outcome as a large volume of scientific papers with many illustrations, a list of the professor's writings, and a good portrait. Four of the articles appeal to physicians, one to botanists, one to geologists, and the remainder to zoologists

This article focuses on the book "The Water Wheel," by Julian L. Shapiro. If a first novel seems to follow, as "The Water Wheel" does, pretty closely the novelist's biography as presented on the flap, its autobiographical substance is usually set down by reviewers on the debit side. The novelist is told that he ought to have tried a more extensive sort of novel. Such comment would do "The Water Wheel" and its author art injustice. Disregarding certain episodes, one will admit that the author has succeeded in what he set out to do though there remains the suspicion that he did not set out to do enough, and that a novel ought to embody more than one kind of reality.

Names in literary biography are of two sorts — those which in the first flash of thought call to mind printed writings, and those which stand preeminently for living individuals. Author James Russell Lowell's geniality and his manliness appeal to every one who appreciates simplicity and genuineness of character. His moral earnestness, his ideality, and the peculiar shade of his patriotism mean most, perhaps, to Americans of the conservative New England type. His bookishness, his minor pedantries, and the finer flavor of his individuality attract the especial sympathy of those who, if they do not live the academic life, have breathed the academic atmosphere.

This article presents information on various books. "Essays in Biography," by Charles Whibley, is among forthcoming volumes. Bertha Runkle will issue this season, through the publishing house Century Co. an historical romance, entitled "The Scarlet Rider." The first copies of the "Britannica Year-Book, 1913," are now appearing from the press of the Encyclopedia Britannica Co. It aims to do for a single year, 1911-1912, what the eleventh edition of the encyclopedia has done for all time.

This article presents information on publication of books included in this issue. Some of them are as follows: The publications of G.P. Putnam's Sons will include a uniform edition of author George Borrow's works, edited and annotated in part by Professor W.I. Knapp, Borrow's biographer; and a novel, "Ned Myers" or "A Life Before the Mast," discarded from the revised edition of author Fenimore Cooper's works in 1859. McClure, Phillips & Co. will publish an authorized translation of Leroy-Beaulieu's "Rénovation de l'Asie."

This article presents information on the book "Spare Hours," and its author John Brown. He has only written those light, sketchy papers made up from the odds and ends of everything. Former books of Brown, have made a place for him in every family circle where genial and enjoyable life is appreciated and the new series of his papers will be gladly welcomed by all who have ever read the first story, "Rab and His Friends," which gave the author a wide acquaintance with American readers. Brown excels in two lines of writing--story-telling and biography.

This article presents a list of several books, related to diverse topics. Some of the books on poetry and drama are "Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1918," by W.S. Braithwaite, and "European Theories of the Drama," by B.H. Clark. Books related to history and biography are "Memories: Grave and Gay," by F.H. Fall and "Certain American Faces: Sketches From Life," by C.L. Slattery. Some of the fiction books are "The Paper Cap," by A.E. Barr, "The Pawns of Fate," by P.E. Bowers, and "Where Your Heart Is," by Beatrice Harraden.

This article presents information on the works of authors George William Curtis and Theodore Winthrop. The novelist, Theodore Winthrop, had two production from his pen: "A Companion to the Heart or the Andes" and "Our March to Washington." Almost immediately there appeared the second military sketch, "Washington as a Camp." Curtis's biographical sketch of Winthrop appeared, together with fragments of a projected third paper and portions of war-time letters. There seems no probability of proving that they were not submitted in the regular way.

This article presents information on the "biography and iconography," a certain number of official and unpublished papers and a bibliography, of "Francisco de Miranda," which form the contents of a volume of nearly 200 octavo pages, by author Count O'Kelly. The story of Miranda is recounted at length, in its proper setting of time and place, in the volume published in 1812 by the lamented Jules Mancini on "Bolivar and the Emancipation of the Spanish Colonies" This work of original research, the completest yet published, reaches only to 1815, and it is to be feared that no one will be found to utilize the materials which the author was gathering at the moment of his death for a concluding volume.

This article focuses on the book "The Life and Correspondence of Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain," by Philip C. Yorke. Yorke is a descendant of the Chancellor, and so had no difficulty in placing himself in the environment of his hero, through the perusal of family letters, listening to family traditions, and by the careful study of the activities of his ancestors chronicled in many state papers, private correspondence, and contemporary memoirs. The perusal of his three ponderous volumes gives evidence of his industry and his conscientious attempt to perform an act of piety; but that same perusal has left the reviewer with a feeling of having been present during most of the laborious undertaking.

From 1835, when Samuel Augustus Maverick made his first trip to San Antonio, down to this day, the name of Maverick has always meant a great deal in Texas. Rena Maverick Green, who is a granddaughter of this original Texas Maverick and whose own contributions to life in San Antonio have been considerable, has spent many years in bringing together papers dealing with the life and times of Maverick now she has edited them with competence and scrupulous scholarship and seen to their publication. The result is a good-looking book "Samuel Maverick, Texan 1803-1870: A Collection of Letters, Journals, and Memoirs."

The article focuses on the book Centennial Essays for Pushkin, edited by Samuel H. Cross and Ernest J. Simmons. The papers which make up this scholarly symposium are chiefly exercises in exegesis and appreciation, and add nothing to the known facts. One finds here a biographical sketch of the Russian poet Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, an authoritative and acute analysis, by George V. Vernadsky, of Pushkin's political philosophy, a topic which a good deal of recent commentary has only served to obscure; an admirable consideration, by Michael Karpovich, of the poet as a historian.

This article presents the author's views on the biography of Viscount Knebworth, the boxing peer. Much is revealed in the photographs of Lord Knebworth; the good looks at the time when, with the supreme egoism of boyhood he busied himself in naively hedonistic pursuits, the egoism change from his coming-of-age until his death neatly nine years later. The quality of his Oxford letters and a tea, distinction of style in the later papers would be sufficient, themselves, to disprove that. The significance is that he preferred to think it true-it was, in short, good form.

The article presents a discussion of the book "The Queen and Mr. Gladstone," by Philip Guedalla. The long coast line of the 19th century is receding now, and all its reputations begin to stand out in their true proportions," observes Guedalla. In this mood he presents evidence for the revaluation of two of its major figures who "have been to some extent the victims of historical injustice." From 6,000 relevant papers in the possession of the Gladstone Trustees he has selected 1,205 items, some five-sixths hitherto unpublished, and illuminated them with 153 pages of commentary, historical and biographical.

In the book "In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family," Nansook Hong's tell-all about life in the Sun Myung Moon family, isn't up to that challenge either. Forty years ago, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was a pauper in what was then one of the poorest nations on Earth. If In the Shadow of the Moons does indeed mark the end of Moon as a legitimate figure, it will not be because of his nefarious political connections, questionable business operations or religious hypocrisy.

The article presents information on two books. The books are: "Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry," by Paul Breines; "The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane-From FBI Informant to Knesset Member," by Robert I. Friedman. "Tough Jews," provide an antidote to the ideology of toughness and nationalism that Breines sees dominating political discourse today. Robert I. Friedman's "The False Prophet," complements Breines uncannily. A biography of Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League, it is an implacably pursued exposure of a particularly virulent strain of that nationalism embodied in one pathological but all-too-persuasive figure.

The article presents information on "A Political Biography," by Kent Worcester. A Political Biography provides insight into James's family life and the various political projects and positions he embraced while he lived in England and the United States after leaving Trinidad in 1932. It is a careful, thorough piece of scholarship, utilizing primary sources that had been neglected by other James scholars and interviews in addition to secondary literature. Though Worcester clearly admires his subject, he maintains a critical distance that enables him to dissect James's evolution as a thinker and strategist-from gifted, classically trained colonial scholarship student to Trotskyist theoretician, only to return, after renouncing Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, to his second phase of political education.

The article discusses the book "W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919," by David Levering Lewis. The first in a projected two-volume study, W.E.B. Du Bois takes its subject from his birth in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, to the dramatic year 1919, when Du Bois organized a Pan-African Congress in Paris, even as revolutions rose and fell throughout the industrialized world. The author of a highly praised biography of King Lewis has produced a book that is sprawling, richly detailed and persuasive in most of its judgments. Lewis takes his subtitle, Biography of a Race, seriously, for this is very much a life and times, offering valuable insights into the black and white worlds in which Du Bois lived, and the political, educational and intellectual development of black U.S.

The article presents information related to the publication of books in the United States. John Langdon Sibley, librarian of Harvard College, has for many years been engaged in preparing biographical sketches of the first 225 graduates of the Academic Department of the university, and now proposes, if he receives sufficient support, to publish them in a single volume. The London "Spectator" is a very clever paper, as everybody knows, and as honest a journal, beyond a doubt, as any that ever existed, but there is no doubt either that, now and again, in one of several ways, it allows its enemies a chance to mock at it and cast derision upon it.

This article focuses on the books "Memoirs and Letters of the Right Hon. Sir Robert Morier, G.C.B., From 1826 to 1876," written by Rosslyn Wemyss. Although the English resent foreign criticism to a degree that is often amusing, they sometimes criticise themselves not only very frankly, but quite accurately. Writer Sir Robert Morier's daughter has edited the book with a view to presenting as much political and historical material as possible. This is well, for it is no exaggeration to say that her volumes contain more new sidelights on the unification of Germany than can be found in any other English work. The book had a passion for thoroughness which, coupled with a marked historic sense, led him to prepare for the foreign office papers which, though probably seldom read by his superiors, have a lasting importance for the historian.

The article discusses the book "Life of the Right Hon. William Edward Forster," by T. Wemyss Reid. The book is not of the first order of biographies, but it is an admirable blending of the private life of a man with sufficient contemporary history to enable an understanding and appreciation of his career. As long as the recollections of those events, and the names of the many great and interesting men with whom Forster was associated, remain in the public mind, it will be referred to, and there is much in it that will recommend it to the historian and the searcher after facts to illustrate the annals of the time.

This article presents information on publication of books included in this issue. Publishing house Sheldon & Co. will publish a biography of the late lamented General George A. &Cgrave;uster. The volume will embrace also his war memoirs, hitherto published in the Galaxy, together with the last of the series, written and despatched on his fatal march against the Sioux. A. Williams & Co. will publish a selection of the papers. Their titles are: "The Production and Distribution of Wealth," by David A. Wells; and "The Work of Social Science," by F.B. Sanborn.

The article presents information on several books relating to theatre. Two of the books are "Mrs. Duff," by Joseph N. Ireland, "Great Artists of the American Stage: A Portrait Gallery of the leading Actors and Actresses of America, with Critical Biographies," by Alfred Trumble. Author Joseph N. Ireland had preferred rather to give them a third volume, covering the score of years and all the changes between 1860 and 1880, than to toil anew and at length the story of the life of a single actress, even though she were as great an artist as Mary Duff. Trumbles pamphlet contains brief biographies of thirty actors and actresses seen of late years on the New York stage, accompanied by wood-cut portraits engraved from photographs and it is apparently a reprint from some weekly paper.

There exist well-known biographies of the eminent philosopher Immanuel Kant; but besides the remarkable facts given in these there are many little anecdotes and stories preserved by tradition in the families of Kant's friends, or published in small local papers, never or rarely to be found abroad. The unrestrained development of freedom as a right of man, combined with strict obedience to authority, made up Kant's political code. It is a remarkable fact that Kant never took a journey and never saw a city besides his native one. All the rich knowledge of the world in his possession he had acquired by the study of books.

The article presents information on the book "The Way of Ecben. A Comedietta Involving a Gentleman," by James Branch Cabell. In the commentary that makes up a considerable portion of this book, Cabell accepts the disadvantages incident to his advanced years and finds fifty the precise and suitable moment for terminating the biography. He describes the unfortunate condition of the aging romancer who must needs repeat himself in a declining achievement, and sets himself to outwit time by renouncing the stage long before the curtain shows any disposition to come rumbling down. Elsewhere he has spoken approvingly of certain young men who were so fortunate or so wise as to die to life or literature at the age of twenty-nine, and it may be that he has concluded that the game is not worth the candle and that there remain other diversions to life than the peculiar one of making marks on paper.

The article discusses the book "Thomas Jefferson. The Apostle of Americanism," by Gilbert Chinard. To imagination, sympathy, and wide knowledge the author has added the fruits of long and painstaking research. He has not suddenly boiled a pot with a biography of Jefferson; on the contrary he had already published four volumes on that great Virginian when he began on this, and not content with the data in hand he proceeded to explore thousands of unpublished letters and papers, which had never been thoroughly examined before.

The article presents various books for publication related to fiction, government and economics, biography and history, drama and music, etc. Some of these books are "The Princess Cecilia," by E. Davis, "Marriage by Conquest," by W. Deeping, "The Arya Samaj," by Lajpat Rai, "An Essay on the Civilizations of India, China, and Japan," by G.L. Dickinson, "Collected Papers of John Westlake on Public International Law," edited by L. Oppenheim, "Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon: The Silver Age of Louis XIV," by Francis Arkwright, and "Yale Yesterdays," by C. Deming.

The article focuses on the book "The Works of Edgar Allan Poe," edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry. The book is published by Charles Scribner's Sons. The Scribners, having acquired all rights to the Stedman-Woodherry edition of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, have reissued it in a most attractive form, using special paper and new plates in the type employed in their edition of Turgenieff. The distribution into ten volumes, the text and choice of contents, the illustrations, the biographical and critical introductions follow substantially the first issue of twenty years ago, and the result is a set of books in which the fastidious author would have delighted.

The article provides information on the book "Berlioz," by J.H. Elliot, a biography of the French composer, Hector Berlioz . The Master Musicians Series has filled an obvious gap by adding a "Berlioz" to its list. Unfortunately the editor, Eric Blom, who is also the distinguished music critic of the Manchester Guardian, has assigned the task to his second-in-command on that paper, and in the absence of any special fitness the result is just another bad book on Berlioz. It is easy enough, once an artist or thinker has been ransomed from neglect or abuse, to expatiate on his merits and his faults with critical poise. Elliot confesses again and again that he is baffled; and by a not unnatural trick of self-deception he ascribes to his subject the contradictions and chaos which as a critic he has not been able to resolve.

This article presents information on the book "Grover Cleveland: A study in Courage," by Allan Nevins. Grover Cleveland, U.S. President, and his age have found their biographer in Allan Nevins. The qualities of the U.S. President and the era are subtly mingled in the historian. Cleveland was thorough, industrious, gifted with enlightened common sense; Mr. Nevins has, preeminently, the same qualities. If Cleveland worked often until two or three in the morning on state papers, Mr. Nevins must have maintained a similar grueling pace in his foraging among documents and the living reminiscences of old men to complete so Boswellian a biography.