INETY years young is the firm of

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N Little, Brown, & Company-one

of the oldest of American publishing houses, and the oldest book-publishing concern in Boston. This firm traces its origin back to 1784 when Ebenezer Battelle opened a little bookstore on Marlborough street (now Washington street) between School and Eliot streets, in Boston. The The bookstore passed through various changes of ownership and location, began to publish as well as to sell books, and in 1837 became Little and Brown. Ten years later the firm name was changed to Little, Brown, & Company.

After seventy-two years in one location on Washington street the publishing house moved in 1909 into its present offices in the historic Cabot House at 34 Beacon street. This house was erected at a period when Beacon Hill represented the acme of Boston's wealth and culture. The large, high-ceilinged rooms are admirably adapted for offices and the carved woodwork and imported marble fireplaces have been retained to lend dignity and beauty.

Since the earliest days Little, Brown, & Company have been the publishers of outstanding books. Among their first publications were the "Life and Works of Washington," by Jared Sparks, in twelve volumes; Sparks's "American Biography," in twenty-five volumes; and the works of John Adams, Edward Everett, and Daniel Webster. Later publications included the works of Francis Parkman, Admiral A. T. Mahan's epoch-making books on sea power, translations of the Polish novels of Henryk Sienkiewicz, and editions of Dumas, Daudet, and Hugo.

Until 1896, when Sienkiewicz's "Quo Vadis" was published, the house had

issued only a few titles in the field of current fiction. "Quo Vadis," which had a sale of more than seven hundred and fifty thousand copies, was the first of many best-selling novels to be issued by the company. The general list was enlarged in 1889 when, by acquiring the publishing business of Roberts Brothers, Little, Brown, & Company came into possession of many books of recognized literary worth. Included in the list taken over were Miss Wormeley's famous translations of Balzac and Molière and the writings of such authors as Louisa May Alcott, Edward Everett Hale, Helen Hunt Jackson, Laura E. Richards, Emily Dickinson, Susan Coolidge, and Mary P. Wells Smith.

In recent years the house has published the books of many popular novelists of the day, including Jeffery Farnol, Mary E. Waller, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Mary Johnston, A. Hamilton Gibbs, Stephen McKenna, Owen Johnson, A. S. M. Hutchinson, and Sylvia Thompson. Mr. Hutchinson's novel, "If Winter Comes," published in 1921, attained a sale of a half-a-million copies in America and England within a year of publication.

The varied character of the general list of the company is illustrated by the fact that it includes biography, history, drama, poetry, science, and cook books. Little, Brown, & Company have been one of the leading publishers of law books in America, their imprint appearing on the legal works of such authorities as Chancellor Kent, Emory Washburn, Judge Story, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and John H. Wigmore. The Educational Department, organized in 1904, publishes a high quality list of text books. An important forward step was made in 1925, when Little, Brown, & Company entered

into an alliance with the book-publishing department of the Atlantic Monthly Company, whereby Little, Brown, & Company became the publishers of all Atlantic Monthly Press books. These books were thereafter issued under a distinctive trade-mark as "Atlantic Monthly Press Publications." Among the new books bearing the Atlantic Monthly Press colophon is "Jalna" by Mazo de la Roche, winner of the Atlantic Monthly $10,000 prize for "the most interesting novel of any kind, sort, or description."

Early this year the editorial staff was

strengthened by the addition of a Children's Editor and it is the intention of the firm to give even closer attention to the development of their list of children's books. This year they offered a prize of $2,000 for a title suitable for inclusion in The Beacon Hill Bookshelf for boys and girls, an illustrated series of longestablished favorites by such authors as Louisa May Alcott, Francis Parkman, John Masefield, and Helen Hunt Jackson. Cornelia Meigs was awarded this prize for her excellent story of the days just before the Revolution, "The Trade Wind."

BIOGRAPHY, THE LITERATURE OF PERSONALITY. By James C. Johnston. 312 pp. Cloth, New York: The Century Company.

Professor Johnston, in this book, tells us that Jacques Amyot, as early as the middle of the sixteenth century, wrote these words:

"There is neither picture, nor image of marble, nor sumptuous sepulchre, can match the durableness of an eloquent biography."

Professor Johnston presents certain aspects of biographical literature to show that life-writing is fundamentally "The Literature of Personality." He says that this element distinguishes it from all other departments of expression, for in no other literary form is personality so completely the determining factor.

This book is dedicated to Gamaliel Bradford and Mr. Bradford writes an important foreword on the significance of biography. "The basis of biography is the identity of human life and human nature," Mr. Bradford asserts. "With all the superficial diversity," he continues, "human beings at large are like each other. The same passions drive us, the same fears restrain us, the same long, undying ambitions urge us on to ever re

newed achievement, and the same fatal weariness and despair at times overcome us, only to give place to hope reborn and the ever-varied, unfailing effort to accomplish something, often we know not what. It is this unity of motive and of interest that makes us eager to know all

can of the lives of others, for by learning the nature of their efforts and impulses we come better to understand our own, and also to appreciate the interworking of our lives with theirs."

Mr. Bradford further states that the art of the biographer shows perhaps most of all in structure and handling. Here are some of his rules:

Reflect long upon the whole treatment of your subject before you write a word.

Get the larger perspective of the character you are dealing with, its main significance to the world.

Get the effect of climax in various episodes, the balanced relation and proportion of different traits.

Select your materials and winnow them with the nicest care.

See that you use only what bears directly upon the point you have to illustrate. Do not undermine the reader's patience with the superfluous or otiose.

Use all subordinate incidents and characters in such a way as to bring out the main, essential lines which are most of all needed to make your final result a perfect and enduring picture.

Professor Johnston points out that the conception of biography is something far more than the mere story of a life; in which facts are orderly arrayed for their own chronological sake; it harks back, he asserts, to the etymological meaning of the term "biography" as life-writing, in which character and personality conIstitute the essential features.

Professor Johnston shows that the biographer must possess not only vision and generalizing power but must be equipped with a high degree of analytical skill, and preserve the best that has been thought

and done in the life of the individual. Whatever distinguishes a man- such as his mode of thinking or acting, his habits and manners, and indeed, even his language and tastes contributes to the sum total of his personality. The biographer must be a specialist in personality. He must know what individualizes his subject and he must be able to vivify his material and re-create the life exactly as it was lived.

Professor Johnston describes how the development of the subjective memoir is a comparatively modern aspect of biography-writing, whereas the objective forms of the general type of memoirs are found even in the literature of the ancients.

At the end of this book there is a list of one hundred representative biographical works for the purpose of illustrating the character and range of biography. Biographies of an objective type are first listed; then autobiographies, letters, confessions, memoirs, and diaries; biographical essays, portraits, travels, biographical poetry, and minor forms of biography.

raphy, as Professor Johnston sets forth in a masterful way the aim of biography from every angle and analyzes its many methods.

In conclusion, Professor Johnston says: "The world has a right to an honest, richly complete presentation of the character and achievements, personality and temperament, and all that is implied in the essential personality of the subject, as true to life as human skill can make it." V. C. L.

MUCH LOVED BOOKS; Best Sellers Of The Ages. By James O'Donnell Bennett. 460 pp. Cloth, New York: Boni & Liveright.

The editors of the Chicago Tribune conceived the clever idea of running a series of brief articles which should emphasize the deathless news value of great books of ancient and modern times. These articles, written by a practicing newspaper man, have now been assembled in book form under the title, "Much Loved Books." The subjects, beginning with the Bible, range all the way from "Treasure Island" to Boswell's "Life of Johnson," from "The Scarlet Letter" to "Les Miserables."

A few words are written about the history of these stories, their authors become vivid personalities to the reader, and their meaning and popularity are explained, in a new refreshing manner.

For instance, Mr. Bennett cites twenty. of the best short stories in the Bible. "They are perfect specimens of what we think of as the modern short story," he says. And in this chapter on the Bible, Mr. Bennett tells how an aged rabbi taught him the true significance of this book, known to the people of his faith as the Holy Scriptures.

In the next chapter, on Stevenson's "Treasure Island," the reader is told how that book came to be written. It was a case of a young American boy asking his Scotch stepfather to "try and write something interesting," at Braemer in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Thus it came about during the bleak autumn of 1881, that

This list alone is ample justification for this book and should prove of great help to the reader. Likewise the entire book cannot fail to interest the lover of biog