tion to close October 1. Particulars in July WRITER. O. Henry Memorial Prize of $500, offered by the Society of Arts & Sciences, for the best short story published in America in 1919. Particulars in THE WRITER for April and May. The Poetry Society of America prize of $500, offered through Columbia University, for the best book of poetry by an American published in 1919. Particulars in June WRITER. Prizes of $1,000, $600, and $400 offered by the American Sunday-School Union (Philadelphia) for the best book manuscripts on specified subjects offered before December I, 1919. Particulars April WRITER. in Prizes of $500, $200, $100, and four of $50 each offered by the True Story Magazine for the best stories from real life, submitted by January 1, 1920. Particulars in May WRITER. Walker Trust open prize of £200 and eight limited prizes of £25 each for essays on Spiritual Regeneration," offered by the University of St. Andrew's, Scotland, submitted before March 1, 1920. Particulars in June WRITER. Prize of $100 offered by the Matinee Musical Club, of Philadelphia, for a cantata suitable for women's chorus, to be submitted by November 1. Particulars in July WRITER. Prize of $500 for a musical comedy, offered by Carl Hunt, manager of the Plymouth Theatre, Bos ton. Particulars in July WRITER. Prize of fifty dollars for a play of two or three acts, suitable for production at the Municipal Theatre in Forest Park, St. Louis, and an equal sum for a play designed to be acted by children before an audience of children, offered by the Committee on Drama and the Literary Arts of the St. Louis Art League. Competition to close October 1. Particu lars in June WRITER. Prizes offered by Poetry (Chicago) for the best work printed in the magazine during the year October, 1918 September, 1919. Particulars in December WRITER. Prize of $100 offered by Poetry (Chicago), as a mark of distinction, like a scholarship, to be awarded in November to the unknown poet among its contributors who most deserves and needs the stimulus of such a reward. Particulars in March WRITER. Two prizes of five dollars for the best photographs published in Physical Culture each month and two prizes of $100 for the best photographs published each six months, offered by Physical Culture, New York. Particulars in May WRITER. Monthly prizes offered by the Photo-Era (Boston) for photographs, in an advanced competition and a beginner's competition. Weekly prizes offered by the Boston Post for original short stories by women, published each day. Particulars in January WRITER. Prizes of two dollars and one dollar offered monthly by Wohelo (New York) for stories, short poems, and essays on subjects suggested by the editor, written by Camp Fire girls. Particulars in November WRITER. The Boston Evening Record is paying one dollar each week day for a poem written by a Record reader. WRITERS OF THE DAY. Edna Mary Booth, whose story "Being a Man," came out in Scribner's for August, began to "make up" stories when a small girl, treasuring them in old blank books and on stray sheets of paper, but never giving them voice. I health interfered with her education and has always been a handicap, but she has had stories in the New York Herald, the Christian Endeavor World, the Mother's Magazine, the Woman's Magazine, the Designer, the People's Home Journal, and in less known magazines and papers. Today's Housewife has a story not yet printed. Miss Booth was born in New Haven, and has always lived in Connecticut. She says she considers the desire to write most unfortunate, yet she would be quite miserable without it. She is not at all sure about the "gift of writing," but she is sure of the need of a gift of courage for one who would write. Marjorie Prentiss Campbell, who had a story, "Me or the Dog," in the May Delineator, wrote first under the name of Marjorie Lewis Prentiss, but since her marriage in 1917 she has signed all her stories Marjorie Prentiss Campbell. She is a graduate of Vassar College, and for some time studied the technique of story writing at Columbia University. She is now Mrs. Dudley Dakin Campbell, and has always lived in Brooklyn. She has been writing about six years, and has had stories published in the Argosy, the All-Story Magazine, the Smart! Set, the Designer, the Woman's Magazine, and others. Hearst's Magazine will publish her story, "After Midnight," some time the coming winter, and Snappy Stories will soon publish another story. Mrs. Campbell says that for her writing is agony and never seems to get any easier, but she adds that it is an agony that she seeks deliberately and one to which she is very much attached. Frances Healey, who wrote the story, "The Yankee Doodle Scarab," which St. Nicholas printed in its July number, was born in Hampton Falls, N. H., where she now lives, generally spending the winters in Boston. Miss Healey was graduated from Wellesley in 1907, and spent the winter of 1910-11 in Jerusalem at the American School for Oriental Research, and that gay and adventurous winter for while making a trip east of the Dead Sea she was captured, with other Europeans, by Bedouins, and held a prisoner for a week has given her her best material for literary work. She has had short stories in the Atlantic Monthly and the Outlook, and a number of stories, long and short, in Everyland. The Youth's Companion has bought several of her stories, which are as yet unpublished, and Walter Baker & Company is doing a playlet called "The Coffee Pot." Miss Healey says she has tried her hand at story-writing, playwriting, and essay-writing, and that she even sold a poem once for fifty cents but the play-writing is the most interesting of all. -- Muriel Howard Steele, whose story, "Mr. Blue, Kidnapper," came out in the July Harper's, is a native of Denver, but is now teaching Romance languages at Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa. She says that although "Mr. Blue, Kidnapper," is her first story, she trusts that it will not be her last. Louise Winter, who wrote the story, "Ebb Tide," printed in Young's Magazine for August, and who has a story, "Madigan's Youth," in the September issue of Ainslee's, is a New York woman and has written for years. Her first poem was published in a magazine started by Edward W. Bok, and her first novelette, "Hearts Aflame," was published in the Smart Set, and afterward was dramatized. In between she has written novelettes and short stories, and for the past four years has usually had from two to three stories appearing each month in the current light fiction magazines, such as Young's, the Parisienne, Ainslee's, Breezy Stories, and the Smart Set. Many of her stories are of modern domestic problems, and the field furnishes her with endless themes. Of late, she has been selling film rights of her pub lished stories. "The Spite Bride," in which Olive Thomas is now being shown, appeared in Saucy Stories; "The Magnificent Jacala (The Brazen Beauty)" was a Parisienne novelette; "Princess Virtue," in Breezy Stories, was filmed for Mae Murray, and is now being turned into a musical comedy which Miss Winter says proves her old contention that the public is interested in tales of everyday life. BOOK REVIEWS. THE EROTIC MOTIVE IN LITERATURE. By Albert Mordell. 250 pp. Cloth. New York: Boni & Liveright. 1919. Lest the title of Mr. Mordell's book should give a wrong impression of it, his explanation of the word "erotic" should be considered. Unfortunately," he says, "it has assumed an unsavory meaning, although it means related to love,' and is derived from the Greek 'eros' love. Properly speaking, all love poetry is erotic poetry; in fact, the greatness of poetry and literature is its eroticism, for they are most true then to life, which is largely erotic. Since there is no word in English to specify love interest in its widest sense, we must cling to the use of the word 'erotic' and 'eroticism." We should restore to the word eroticism its original and nobler meaning. Any literary work that lays an emphasis on the part played by love in our lives is erotic." Starting with this assumption, Mr. Mordell proceeds to apply, in psychoanalysis of literature, taking up the writings of Stevenson, Cowper, Lamb, Carlyle, Keats, Shelley, Browning, Poe, Lafcadio Hearn, and many others, the principles of Dr. Freud's work, "The Interpretation of Dreams," with most sensational results. His idea is that a literary production, even if no dream is recorded therein, is still a dream that of the author. "It represents the fulfilment of his unconscious wishes, or registers a complaint because they are not fulfilled. . . . A literary work stands in the same relation to the author as the dream to the patient." As a result, therefore, to one skilled in the art of psychoanalysis, a book discloses its author's. unconscious thoughts and feelings. Mr. Mordell's idea is that an author not only writes what he writes, but is, more than he realizes, what he writes, since what he writes is the output of his subconscious self, or, in Freudian phrase. "his unconscious." In this belief, Mr. Mordell proceeds to tell what the works of the various authors he discusses disclose to him including revelations that would certainly be most surprising to the authors. How far this psychoanalysis will be accepted by the reader will depend variously upon the reader, but the reader in any case will have to admit that Mr. Mordell has written a very suggestive and interesting book. THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF CURRENT ENGLISH. Adapted from the Oxford Dictionary, by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler. Fifth impression. 1,064 pp. Cloth. New York: Oxford University Press, American Branch. 1917. The basis of this work is the Oxford English Dictionary through the published parts (AR) and it has justly been termed "a marvel of condensed scholarship." It defines more than sixty thousand words, giving more than ordinary attention to the common words often disposed of in dictionaries in a line or two on the ground that they are plain and simple, although the idiomatic use of them is really far from easy. Copious use is made of illustrative sentences as a necessary supplement to definition, and to make room for all this matter everything possible is done to economize expression. The vocabulary is meant to include only words in current use, and makes a judicious selection among the thousands of old or new scientific and technical terms, but on the other hand admits colloquial, facetious, slang, and vulgar expressions' with freedom, merely attaching a cautionary label, without, however, any consultation of slang dictionaries or attempt at completeness in this respect. Prepared primarily for the English public, the dictionary tends to follow English fashions, defining "jail," for instance, by a cross reference to "gaol," but giving the spelling "curb as well as 'kerb." Foreign words appear in their alphabetical place, not in an appendix, and pronunciations are precisely indicated. The book is of handy size for frequent use,__and it is the best handy dictionary showing English usage. THE DESK STANDARD DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH This new edition of the desk abridgment of the New Standard Dictionary gives the spelling, pronunciation, meaning, and etymology of about eighty thousand words and phrases, together with 1,200 pictorial illustrations that help to make the definitions clear. Care has been taken to include every worthy word used by the standard English authors, or in the best current literature, and special pains have been taken to cover the recent words of science and invention so far as these have come into practical use. The pages are not encumbered with obsolete words and dialectic and slang words have been in the main excluded, although definitions are given of many colloquial words. One of the best features of the dictionary is that it has only one vocabulary, with proper names, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes, etc., all in one alphabetical order. The vocabulary includes 6,700 proper names, giving within a limited space a great amount of biographical, historical, and geographical information. Much attention is given to synonyms and antonyms, and the right use of prepositions is carefully pointed out. Useful tables are included for instance, tables of coins and weights and measures, and a list of Presidents and an appendix translates foreign words and phrases. Every writer should have a copy of this dictionary on his desk. MY OWN STORY. By Fremont Older, Editor San Francisco Call. Boards. 197 pp. San Francisco : The Call Publishing Company. 1919. Mr. Older's autobiography is something more than the ordinary reminiscences of a newspaper editor, since the quarter of a century covered by his recollections, beginning in January, 1895. when he became managing editor of the Bulletin, of San Francisco, was a period full of dramatic incidents in the history of the city, in which the energetic editor and reformer took an active and important part. My First Political Fight, The Charter Fight, Trapping Four Senators, Planning the Graft Prosecution, The Carmen's Strike, The Conviction of Ruef, and The Story of Lily are some of the chapter headings, which indicate the thrilling interest of the revelations in which Mr. Older tells of "the struggle that led into every corner of San Francisco life, into the depths of the underworld, to attempted murder and dynamiting and assassination, that involved some of the biggest men in the American business world, and wrecked them; that ended by filling San Francisco with armed thugs and overturning the Southern Pacific rule of California." Mr. Older writes with nervous energy, in a strong effective style, and his book is one of absorbing interest. OPPORTUNITIES IN THE NEWSPAPER BUSINESS. James Melvin Lee. 100 PP. Cloth. Brothers. 1919. By Harper & This addition by the Director of the department of journalism in New York University to the series of Opportunity Books tells what those who enter journalism may expect, in chapters devoted to the country weekly, the small-city daily, and the metropolitan daily. Mr. Lee has a thorough knowledge of his subject and writes with authority. An appendix gives a list of more than fifty books devoted to different aspects of the newspaper business. THE LIFE OF JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. By Robert to 1881, when the first "Uncle Remus " volume was published, comprises about 150 pages, and is based on information given by Mrs. Harris; researches made in Eatonton, Forsyth, Savannah, and Atlanta, in each of which places were still living those who had known Harris in his youth and could give personal recollections of him; and study of Mr. Harris's boyhood scrap-books, with letters, clippings, etc., submitted by Mrs. Harris to the author. With these advantages he has made a very interesting sketch, supplementing the life of Mr. Harris recently published by his daughter-in-law. The next 250 pages of the book are devoted to reprinting "early literary efforts" of Mr. Harris, comprising poetry as well as prose writings. The book closes with a useful bibliography. PARIS THE MAGIC CITY BY THE SEINE. By Gertrude Hauck Vonne. 354 pp. Cloth. New York: The Neale Publishing Company. 1918. Paris before the war is entertainingly described by Miss Vonne, who spent three years viewing the wonderful things to be seen in the city on the Seine before she wrote this book. She writes in a natural, easy, unaffected style, and she has the happy faculty of telling the things the reader wants to know, making him see the sights she saw many of them unusual through her eyes, and giving him altogether a vivid picture of Paris life. She tells of the Louvre, the Moulin Rouge, the Madeleine, the Duval restaurants, the Sainte Chapelle and the Conciergerie, the old streets, the steamboats on the Seine, and the café concerts, Paris crowds, picnicking in the Bois de Boulogne, French customs, art-student life, and countless other interesting things, seen as a bright girl would see them, with no tiresome guidebook or history quotations to dull the reader's interest. The book is a fascinating one. LYRICS AND SONGS. By Mrs. E. G. Pember. 75 pp. Cloth. Boston Angel Guardian Press. 1913. Mrs. Pember's poems many of them reprinted from the Pilot, Sacred Heart Review, and other papers are not ambitious, but they are characterized by poetic feeling and religious sentiment that will appeal strongly to the reader. ALABAMA BIRD DAY BOOK. Compiled by Sophia Watts. Illustrated. 103 pp. Montgomery, Ala. : State Department of Game and Fish. 1919. This Bird Day Book, designed primarily for the pupils in the schools of Alabama, issued by the State Department of Game and Fish and compiled by the secretary to the Commissioner, contains, besides descriptions of birds seen in Alabama a number of them illustrated with beautiful colored pictures choice selections in poetry and in prose relating to bird life and well adapted to young readers. The publication of the annual edition of this book is a good work well done. HOME MADE BEVERAGES. By Albert A. Hopkins. Under the new national prohibition law there will probably be no interference with the manufacture of non-intoxicating home made beverages, and the definition of "intoxicating" apparently is to be left to popular discretion. In any case, this book will receive a general welcome, since it gives recipes for making everything in the way of beverages, from strong wine to lemonade, thus filling the wants of those who desire to manufacture innocuous beverages at home, and informing those who desire something stronger. Full particulars of each process are given, whether it be for making essences and extracts, non-alcoholic beers, ginger ales, grape juice, malt beverages, Sundaes, hot beverages, beverages for the sick, ciders, wines, mixed drinks, or punches. WHAT IS THE BEST "PSYCHICAL" LITERATURE ? Hereward Carrington. Bookman for August. TOM KETTLE. Henry A. Lappin. Bookman for August. DICKENS AND THE LAW. H. C. Biron. National Review for August. ANGLO-IRISH POETRY. M. V. Halloran. Magnificat for August. BIRDS AS INSPIRATION FOR GREAT COMPOSERS. Edwin Hall Pierce. Etude for August. BATTLES OF THE COLONIAL PRESS. James Melvin Lee. Pep for August. THE STORY OF AMERICA'S FIRST NEWSPAPER. James Melvin Lee. Pep for July. WORDS. Youth's Companion for July 31. HOW THE WAR AFFECTS LITERATURE. Bookseller, Newsdealer, and Stationer for August 1. HIGH PRICES FOR MANUSCRIPTS. Literary Digest for August 2. AN INTELLECTUAL ENTENTE WITH ENGLAND. Literary Digest for August 2. IS LOCAL-COLOR FICTION PASSING? Literary Digest for August 9. WHY AMERICA LACKS A RADICAL PRESS. Literary Digest for August 9. an In the name of Inez Milholland, her mother, Mrs. Jeanne R. Milholland, nounces that a cottage at their country estate, Meadowmount, New York, in the Adirondacks, will be devoted to the vacation and rest period of press and magazine women writers of New York city. Applicants may communicate with Mrs. Zoe McClary, 305 West Forty-fifth street, New York. George Saintsbury, having completed his story of the French novel, has said good-by to the writing of literary history. A study of H. G. Wells by his fellow novelist Edwin Pugh, which in part at least has been running in the New Witness (London), is coming out this autumn in England under the title of "Big Little H. G. Wells." "The Changing Drama," by Archibald Henderson (Cincinnati : Stewart & Kidd Company), is a reprint of a volume published five years ago, containing chapters on varying aspects of the modern stage. 44 Studies in the Elizabethan Drama," by Arthur Symons (E. P. Dutton & Co.), comprises a series of thirteen essays, most of them critiques on plays of Shakspere, collected from various magazines in which they were published some years ago. "The Literary Style of the Prophetic Books of the English Bible," by David Henry Kyes (Boston: Richard G. Badger), is an analysis of the poetic beauty and vigor of the English translation of the Bible. "A Geographical Dictionary of Milton," by Allan H. Gilbert (Yale University Press), is a dictionary of the place-names in Milton's works, with explanations of their meanings for the poet. Poetry and Drama, the London quarterly edited by Harold Monro and issued from the Poetry Book Shop off Theobald's Road, is to appear in a new form. It is to be called the Chapbook, and will appear monthly, still devoting especial attention to poetry. Chatto & Windus, London, are to publish, for the British Drama League, a bi-monthly illustrated magazine called Drama. The officers of the new firm of book pub-lishers, Harcourt, Brace, & Howe, just established in New York, with offices at 1 West Forty-seventh street are: President, Alfred' Harcourt; treasurer, Donald Brace; secretary, Will D. Howe. Mr. Harcourt and Mr. Brace have been associated with Henry Holt & Co. during the past fifteen years, and Mr. Howe has been for some time past head of of the department of English in Indiana University, being also engaged actively in the writing and editing of books for school use. Doubleday, Page, & Co. have sold 1,324,943 copies of Booth Tarkington's books. Andrew Carnegie's will gives $200,000 to the relief fund of the New York Authors Club, and an annuity of $5,000 to George W. Cable. Will N. Harben died in New York August 7, aged sixty-one. Ruggiero Leoncavallo died in Naples August 9, aged sixty-three. Andrew Carnegie died at Lenox, Mass., August 12, aged eighty-three. |