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to contain a fairly comprehensive, reasonably harmonious, and wholesomely practical set of work-rules for the aid of those who have to do with questions of typographical style" - and that is true. Such a book is valuable to any one concerned with the preparation of copy, and to any one who has to read proof it is practically indispensable.

W. H. H. EVERYDAY PHRASES EXPLAINED. 207 pp. Cloth, 60 cents, net. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Com

pany. 1913.

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'Everyday Phrases Explained" is the outcome of a literary competition, entitled "Knowledge Tests," which started in Pearson's Weekly (London) about two years ago. Its object was to bring out explanations of the meaning and origin. not generally known, of words and phrases in popular use, and these explanations are collected in this little volume. The book is entertaining for general reading, and useful for reference. It has a good index.

A HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Allen C. Thomas, A. M., Professor of History in Harvard College. 651 pp. Cloth, $1.50, Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. 1913. This History of England" by Professor Thomas tells the story of the British nation from the earliest times down to the present day, including mention of parliamentary acIts style is clear tion on February 5, 1913.

and simple, and while the book has been written for American schools it will attract and interest the general reader. In the presentation of the facts of English history, the political, social, and economic development of the people is dwelt upon, and while the causes and results of wars receive adequate attention, the details of the wars themselves are placed in the background. The relations between English and European History are shown by printing in an appendix a connected European History from the time of the Romans to the age of Louis XIV, and by inserting references to it in the text of the history itself. In this appendix is given a brief account but adequate for the purpose of such important topics as the Roman Empire, the incursions of the barbarians, the age of Charlemagne, the rise of the states of modern Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, feudalism, monasticism, the crusades, and the reformation. The book is fully supplied with maps and illustrations, and references for collateral reading in books that may be readily found are given with each chapter.

A LEVANTINE LOG-BOOK. By Jerome Hart. 404 pp.
Cloth, $2.00, net.
Co.

1905.

ure in his "Argonaut Letters" from Rome, Paris, Oberammergau, and other European places, and in his "Two Argonauts in Spain," will find equal enjoyment in journeying with him in this book through the Levant. Unlike many writers of books of travel, Mr. Hart satisfies his readers, telling them exactly what they want to know about foreign sights and scenes, giving sufficient information about methods and routes of travel to make his book extremely useful to others planning to follow in his footsteps, and, best of all, omitting trivial and tedious details which would clog the story and lessen interest in the narrative. A lively sense of humor is one of his most prominent characteristics, and no one can read his books and not shake every now and then with laughter. Successive chapters tell of the journey toward the Levant and on to Malta, Athens, Constantinople, Smyrna, Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Cairo, taking the reader then up the Nile to Luxor, and from Thebes to Assouan. From first to last the book is always entertaining. It is handsomely printed, and its beauty and interest are enhanced by many first-class half-tone pictures.

BEHIND THE GARDEN WALL.
Wallace.
By Robert
Illustrated by Elsinore Robinson Crowell. 65 pp.
Boards, $1.00, net. San Francisco: Paul Elder &
Co. 1913.

Mr. Wallace's "magic verses of the underside of things," with fanciful imaginings about frogs and dormice and beetles and bunnies and birds, will appeal to children, and Mrs. Crowell's quaint color pictures, by which the verses are illustrated, will make a no less forcible appeal.

THE SOCIAL RUBAIYAT OF A BUD. By Mrs. Ambrose Madison Willis. Illustrated and decorated by Elsie A. Harrison. 32 pp. Boards, by mail, 81 cents. San Francisco: Paul Elder & Co. 1913.

This satirical parody on the Rubaiyat is uniquely printed in purple and gold on fine double-leaf paper, and the ilustrations and decorations are particularly clever and quaint.

BOOKS RECEIVED:

THE WRITER is pleased to receive for review any books about authors, authorship, language, ог literary topics, or any bocks that would be of real value in a writer's library, such as works of reference, history, biography, or travel. There is no space in the magazine for the review of fiction, poetry, etc. All books received will be acknowledged under this heading. Selections will be made for review in the interest of THE WRITER'S readers. ] WRITING AND EDITING. By Willard Grosvenor Bleyer, Ph. D. 365 pp. Cloth, $1.65, Boston Houghton Mifflin Company. 1913. THE PUBLISHER. By Robert Sterling Yard. 180 Cloth, $1.00, net. Boston: The Houghton P.P. Mifflin Company. 1913.

NEWSPAPER New York: Longmans, Green &

Mr. Hart is a most delightful traveling companion, and those who have journeyed with him in imagination with so much pleas

net.

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The three-year-old bill incorporating the American Academy of Arts and Letters, for the purpose of encouraging literature and art in this country, has been reintroduced in Congress. Named in the bill are about one hundred foremost men of letters of this country. They are incorporators and are to elect directors. To the original list have been added the names of Owen Wister, Pennsylvania; Herbert Adams, New Hampshire; Augustus Thomas and Timothy Cole, New York.

Albert Edwards," whose real name is Arthur Bullard, has sailed for Panama, probably to get material for a book.

Charles Scribner's Sons announce "The Art of the Short Story," by Carl H. Grabo, instructor in English in the University of Chicago.

Katherine Tynan (Mrs. Hinkson) has written the reminiscences of twenty-five years of her life.

Everard Meynell, the son of Wilfred and Alice Meynell, has written a life of Francis Thompson which will appear in America this month. Mr. Meynell knew the poet intimately, and had access to his diary and let

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The home country of R. L. Stevenson is carefully examined in a work to be published this month by Francis Watt, through Methuen. The book deals largely with the scenery of the novels and plays, and there is a critical estimate of Stevenson as man and writer.

"Anthony Trollope: His Work, Associates, and Originals," by T. H. S. Escott, is published by the John Lane Company.

"Henrik Ibsen, Poet, Mystic, and Moralist." by Henry Rose, is published by Dodd, Mead, & Co.

"Paul Bourget," by the Abbé Ernest Dinnet, published by the Houghton Mifflin Company, tells the salient facts of Paul Bourget's life, traces his evolution as a writer, and discusses his position in contemporary French literature with respect both to the past and to the future.

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Copies may now be obtained from the Pub. lishers' Association, Stationers' Hall, London, of the Technical Dictionary of Publishing" in seven languages French, Ger man, English, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and Hungarian — presented by Mr. Heinemann to the International Congress of Publishers, held at Budapest. Not only are all the technical terms included of publishing and bookselling, but also those of printing, binding, engraving, and the like, as well as bibliographical and book collecting terms. addition, appendices showing, among other things, how the types vary and how proofs are corrected in different countries are included, and a full index is given in each language.

In

The Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration offers a first prize of $200 and a second prize of $100 for the best essays on "International Peace," by undergraduate women students or any college or university in the United States; and a prize of $100 for the best essay on "International Arbitration" by an undergraduate man student of any college or university in the United States or Canada. The essays, which must be submitted not later than March 15, 1914, must not exceed 5,000 words.

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Oliver Morosco has announced a play contest, to the winner of which he will give a prize of $1,000, advance royalties of $500, and favorable terms for the life of the play. The contest will close January 15. No play of the "sex" or "vice" variety will be considered. Mr. Morosco prefers a comedy, but will not limit the contest to that sort of entertainment. Manuscripts may be sent direct to Mr. Morosco in Los Angeles, or to T. Daniel Frawley, Longacre Building, New York.

Street & Smith, New York, have begun publishing a new magazine, called Women's Stories, which will appear on the seventh and twenty-third of each month. It is an allfiction, illustrated magazine, intended to make a special appeal to women. The publishers say: "Better than anything in the world, current fiction represents the tendency of the thought of the times, and the most significant fact in the fiction of today is that women are demanding less and less the avoidance of the facts of life in the stories they read." This will make the seventh of the Street & Smith publications, the others being Ainslee's Magazine, the Popular Magazine, Smith's Magazine, the People's Magazine, the New Story Magazine, and the Top-Notch Magazine.

A Canadian monthly magazine for women called Everywoman's World is published by the Continental Publishing Company, Ltd., of Toronto.

The Manhattan Review (New York) is a new monthly magazine devoted largely to economics and international political subjects, with special reference to our relations with the Latin American republics.

The Mid-West Quarterly has been established by the University of Nebraska in the belief that there exists in this country a quantity of excellent writing for which there is no adequate medium of publication, and to afford opportunity for the intellectual essay of a critical character. The Mid-West Quarterly will appear under the editorial supervision of P. H. Frye, with associate editors Hartley Burr, Alexander and Philo M. Buck, Jr. It will be published by the Putnams, being issued during the months of January, April, July, and October.

Dress and Vanity Fair (New York) is a new periodical published by Conde Nast, who has made a success of Vogue and other journals. The Vanity Fair part deals with such outdoor pastimes as football, tennis, golf, motoring, and yachting, and also with affairs of the stage.

The Criterion of Fashion is the new publication of the Curtis Publishing Company, continued from Toilettes.

The Stenographer and the Phonographic World, the two oldest and strongest independent shorthand periodicals of America, have been consolidated under the title of the Stenographer and Phonographic World. The consolidated journal will be issued hereafter, monthly, from the office of the Stenographic World Publishing Company, 428 Perry Building, Philadelphia, but will be edited from New York City by James N. Kimball, editor-in-chief, assisted by Bates Torrey, of Boston, and H. G. Healey, of New York.

The Pulitzer Publishing Company, controlled by Walter Pulitzer, which publishes the Welcome Guest, is to be investigated by Mrs. committee of the stockholders.

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Walter Pulitzer says that after the failure of Satire, her husband bought the Welcome Guest on bonds borrowed of her. Walter Pulitzer is a son of the late Albert Pulitzer, who was a brother of Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World. The heirs of Joseph Pulitzer are in no way associated with Walter Pulitzer in his publication ventures.

The missionary magazine for children, Everyland, is now published by the Missionary Education Movement, 156 Fifth avenue, New York City.

The Laurentian Publishers have established themselves in Chicago with offices in Steinway Hall, announcing an intention of "specializing in Chicago writers."

In Munsey's Magazine henceforth will appear no serial stories, but instead there will be a complete novel in each issue. For the December number, "Black Is White," by George Barr McCutcheon, is announced.

In the November Atlantic, William Arthur Gil in a study of the business man in American fiction finds that the type receives fuller and fairer treatment than at the hands of English novelists, but finds also a tendency on the part of our writers to regard business as an occupation that should be regulated by sentiment rather than by law.

Professor A. G. Newcomer died at Stanford University, September 15, aged fortynine.

Captain Frederic Stanhope Hill died in Cambridge, Mass., September 24, aged eighty-four.

Professor Charles F. Richardson died at Sugar Hill, N. H., October 8, aged sixtytwo.

Stanley Waterloo died in Chicago, October 11, aged sixty-seven.

Mrs. Mary Bradford Crowninshield died at Melrose, Mass., October 15.

William Garrott Brown died at New Canaan, Conn., October 19, aged forty-five.

Miss Mary A. Lathbury died at East Orange, N. J., October 21, aged seventytwo.

Reuben Gold Thwaites died at Madison, Wisconsin, October 22, aged sixty years.

Samuel Eberly Gross died at Battle Creek, Michigan, October 24, aged sixty-nine.

Mrs. Isabel Chapin Barrows died at Groton-on-Hudson, N. Y., October 25, aged sixty-eight.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE TO INTEREST AND HELP ALL LITERARY WORKERS.

VOL. XXV.

BOSTON, DECEMBER, 1913.

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Edmund Burke once said, in comparing the literary style of a certain author with that of Dr. Johnson: "It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration." This epigrammatic criticism is quite as applicable, perhaps, to the style of some modern authors as it was to the style of Dr. Young. Among American story writers of a certain class there seems to be an increasing tendency to produce sensational effects by practicing the art of the contortionist. The supple-bodied posture master tries to create interest or excite amazement by twisting himself into strained or convulsed attitudes, and by forcing his limbs into positions that are unusual, unnatural, or strenuously cramped. Writers of the contortionist

No. 12.

school endeavor to secure the same results by using language in the same way - doing violence to its words, wrenching its forms, and dislocating, more or less completely, its entire structure. They strive to catch and hold the attention of their readers, not by following the established rules of English composition, but by using extraordinary or inappropriate adjectives, by disregarding the significance of nouns, by twisting sentences into eccentric or grotesque forms, and by inventing figures of speech that are always far-fetched, capricious, or fantastic, and often preposterously absurd.

This contorted style is shown at its best or worst in "The White Linen Nurse " of Miss Eleanor Abbott, which ran for three months as a serial in the Century Magazine, and which is now published in book form. The plot of the story is not much better, or worse, than the plots of many other stories that the magazines print; but the incidents are forced, the characters talk and behave as no conceivable or realizable human beings would naturally talk or behave, and the framework of narrative shows everywhere a straining after originality, eccentricity, and sensational effect.

An illustration of the forced incident is to be found in the automobile accident. Motor cars often get beyond control and throw their occupants out; but a gasoline engine that is "dead" as the result of an accident does not bring itself to life and then have perceptible "tremors," emit "horrid creaks," and go "crinkle crankle" every few minutes in order to provide the story teller with a means of prolonging the reader's suspense.

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