| | 185 | Author: | Wharton review: Anonymous | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Note on Edith Wharton, in "Chronicle and Comment"  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | If we were to single out one book from those that have been
published this season as exhibiting in the highest degree that rare
creative power called literary genius, we should name The
Greater Inclination, by Edith Wharton. The book has met with
a fair reception in the press, but it does not seem to us that
enough emphasis has been laid upon the originality of the work.
And not only has Mrs. Wharton brought to these stories a remarkable
power of insight and imagination, but the phase of life in America
which she has chosen for treatment may be said to be altogether new
in her hands. Her work is the more remarkable when we know that
the processes by which her results are reached have been gained
largely through intuition and sympathy. One would almost imagine
in reading these stories that the author must have suffered and
gone deep into life in order to bring up from its depths such
knowledge of the world as is disclosed in her pages. And yet this
is far from being the case. Mrs. Wharton was born little more than
thirty years ago in New York. On both sides she comes of old New
York stock, her mother being a Rhinelander. Most of her time has
been spent between New
Greyscale image of Edith Wharton with two dogs, one perched
on her right shoulder, the other in her left arm.
York and
Newport, and she has also lived abroad, especially in Italy, of
which country she is very fond. Her husband, Mr. Edward Wharton,
is a member of the Philadelphia family of that name, and was
married to Miss Edith Jones fully ten years ago. Both are
passionately fond of animals, and have been for years the moving
spirits in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in
Rhode Island. The photograph which we present of Mrs. Wharton with
her two pet dogs is the only one that was available for
reproduction here, but it is very characteristic when we bear in
mind her love of animals. Her first stories began to appear in
Scribner's and the Century some years ago; one of
them especially, called "Mrs. Manstey's View," published in
Scribner's, attracted a great deal of attention at the time
of its appearance. She is also the author of a book on domestic
architecture and home decoration, published by the Messrs.
Scribner, which was reviewed in these pages a year ago last April.
A review of The Greater Inclination appears on another page. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 188 | Author: | Wilkins, Mary E. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Squirrel. | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE Squirrel lived with his life-long mate near the farm-house. He
considered himself very rich, because he owned an English walnut
tree. Neither he nor his mate had the least doubt that it belonged
to them and not to the Farmer. There were not many like it in the
State or the whole country. It was a beautiful tree, with a mighty
spread of branches full of gnarled strength. Nearly every year
there was a goodly promise of nuts, which never came to anything,
so far as the people in the farm-house were concerned. Every
summer they looked hopefully at the laden branches, and said to
each other, "This year we shall have nuts," but there were never
any. They could not understand it. But they were old people; had
there been boys in the family it might have been different.
Probably they would have solved the mystery. It was simple enough.
The Squirrel and his mate considered the nuts as theirs, and
appropriated them. They loved nuts; they were their natural
sustenance; and through having an unquestioning, though unwitting,
belief in Providence, they considered that nuts which grew within
their reach were placed there for them as a matter of course.
There were the Squirrels, and there were the nuts. No nuts, no
Squirrels! The conclusion was obvious to such simple
intelligences. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 196 | Author: | Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Rabbit-pen | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IN a wire pen beside the gravel path, Fordyce, walking in the
garden of his friend Harkness and imagining marriage, came upon a
tragedy. A litter of new-born rabbits lay upon the straw scattered
about the pen. They were blind; they were hairless; they were
blue-black of body; they oscillated their heads in mute appeal. In
the center of the pen lay one of the tiny things, dead. Above the
little dead body a struggle went on. The mother rabbit fought the
father furiously. A wild fire was in her eyes. She rushed at the
huge fellow again and again. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 197 | Author: | Wharton review: Anonymous | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | About Mrs. Wharton, in "Chronicle and Comment" | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | According to certain chroniclers in the daily press, Mrs. Wharton
is going to write no more long novels, but will devote herself to
serious historical composition. We are glad that she has abjured long
novels, but deplore her intention of becoming an historian. There are
scores of historians busily at work, many of them very good ones, but
where shall we find another writer who could give us such remarkable
work as that contained in The Greater Inclination? It is pure
perversity to give up doing the thing that one can do best in order to
waste time over that which many others can do better. We have a
certain right to speak out frankly on this subject, because we were
among the very first to greet Mrs. Wharton as a writer of very rare
gifts and of unusual distinction. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 198 | Author: | Crane review: Anonymous | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | English Views of Stephen Crane. | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE late Mr. Stephen Crane was, as is well known, much more of a
prophet in England than in his own country, and during his latter
years he found it pleasant to make his home in a land where his
work met with such warm appreciation. Since his death, the English
critical journals have with little or no exception expressed a high
judgment of his literary abilities. The Academy (June 9)
says: | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 199 | Author: | Anonymous | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Indian of Commerce | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | For purposes of literary classification, all Indians may be divided, quite
regardless of linguistic affinities, into three sole tribes—the human,
the inhuman, and the super-human. There is the actual aborigine, interesting to
competent fiction as to science because he is a man and at the same time a
living archive from the childhood of the race. There is the wooden eikon which
stands for questionable cigars or unquestionable penny-a-lining—in
either case a mere peg upon which to hang commercial profit. And there is also
the Red Man of Rhapsody—a conveniently distant fiction to carry
heroics which would seem rather too absurd if fathered upon poor human nature as
we see it next door. With the last-mentioned tribe deals one of the handsomest
and one of the most preposterous books of the season, 'A Child of the Sun,' by
Charles Eugene Banks (Stone). Brilliant as a parrot in mechanical coloration,
the text also seems to have undergone some mental "three-color process."
Fenimore Cooper was cold ethnography to this, and even Prescott's Empire of
Montezuma quite as true to life. There is nothing Indian in these pages, except
the good intention. A curbstone version of the "legend" of the Piasau serves for
warp; and into it the author has woven a truly curious fabric of girl-graduate
mundiloquence and scope. Nominally in prose, the book is in fact very largely
couched in wilful and poor Hiawathan measure, doubly cheap by being masked in
"long type." Perhaps the most diagrammatic comment on the quality of the volume
is in its own exemplary lines about "Pakoble," belle of the "Arctide" tribe, who
was "so perfect in beauty that the artists of the Arctides often begged the
favor of her time, that they might preserve her loveliness to future
generations." It must be said that the fifteen "color-type" illustrations, by
Louis Betts, are far and away above their company and their sort. Of no value as
racial types, they are very uncommonly attractive and sympathetic, and not
without a touch of real poetry in conception as well as in color-scheme. Its
whole dress would befit a worthier volume. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 200 | Author: | Crane review: Anonymous | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Last of Stephen Crane. | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE collection of stories about the Spanish-American war upon which
Mr. Crane was engaged at the time of his death, has lately appeared
in book form under the title "Wounds in the Rain." The St.
James's Gazette (London, September 27) thinks that in a few of
the stories he rises almost, tho not quite, to the level of his
masterpiece, "The Red Badge of Courage." It says: | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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