The Best Short Stories of 1920 19 – Anonymous · Verses Across
Literature · Short Stories
The Best Short Stories of 1920 19The Best Books of Short Stories of 1920: a Critical Summary
18
Literature · Short Stories
The Best Short Stories of 1920 19
The Best Books of Short Stories of 1920: a Critical Summary
AnonymousEnglish
#The Ten Best American Books#
1. #Brown.# Homespun and Gold. Macmillan.
2. #Cather.# Youth and the Bright Medusa. Knopf.
3. #Dwight.# The Emperor of Elam. Doubleday, Page.
4. #Howells,# Editor. Great Modern American Stories. Boni & Liveright.
5. #Johnson.# Under the Rose. Harper.
6. #Sedgwick.# Christmas Roses. Houghton Mifflin.
7. #Smith.# Pagan. Scribner.
8. Society of Arts and Sciences. #O. Henry# Prize Stories, 1919.
Doubleday, Page.
9. #Spofford.# The Elder's People. Houghton Mifflin.
10. #Yezierska.# Hungry Hearts. Houghton Mifflin.
#The Ten Best English Books#
1. #Beerbohm.# Seven Men. Knopf. 2. #Cannan.# Windmills. Huebsch. 3. #Dunsany.# Tales of Three Hemispheres. Luce. 4. #Easton.# Golden Bird. Knopf. 5. #Evans.# My Neighbours. Harcourt, Brace, and Howe. 6. #Galsworthy.# Tatterdemalion. Scribner. 7. #Huxley.# Limbo. Doran. 8. #O'Kelly.# The Golden Barque, and the Weaver's Grave. Putnam. 9. #Trevena.# By Violence. Four Seas. 10. #Wylie.# Holy Fire. Lane.
#The Ten Best Translations#
1. #Aleichem.# Jewish Children. Knopf. 2. #Andreiev.# When the King Loses His Head. International Bk. Pub. 3. #Annunzio.# Tales of My Native Town. Doubleday, Page. 4. #Brown and Phoutrides#, Editors. Modern Greek Stories. Duffield. 5. #Chekhov.# The Chorus Girl. Macmillan. 6. #Dostoevsky.# The Honest Thief. Macmillan. 7. #Hrbkova#, Editor. Czecho-Slovak Stories. Duffield. 8. #Level.# Tales of Mystery and Horror. McBride. 9. #McMichael#, Editor. Short Stories from the Spanish. Boni & Liveright.
10. #Mayran.# Story of Gotton Connixloo. Dutton.
#The Best New English Publications#
1. #Gibbon, Perceval.# Those Who Smiled. Cassell. 2. #Mayne, Ethel Colburn.# Blindman. Chapman and Hall. 3. #Mordaunt, Elinor.# Old Wine in New Bottles. Hutchinson. 4. #O'Kelly, Seumas.# The Leprechaun of Killmeen. Martin Lester. 5. #Robinson, Lennox.# Eight Short Stories. Talbot Press. 6. #Shorter, Dora Sigerson.# A Dull Day in London. Nash. 7. #Lemaître, Jules.# Serenus. Selwyn and Blount.
BELOW FOLLOWS A RECORD OF NINETY-TWO DISTINCTIVE VOLUMES PUBLISHED BETWEEN NOVEMBER 1, 1918, AND OCTOBER 1, 1920.
I. #American Authors#
#The Honourable Gentlemen and Others# and #Wings: Tales of the Psychic#, by Achmed Abdullah (G. P. Putnam's Sons, and the James A. McCann Company). In the first of these two volumes, Mr. Abdullah has gathered the Pell Street stories of New York's Chinatown which have appeared in American magazines during the past few years. As contrasted with Thomas Burke's "Limehouse Nights," these stories reflect the oriental point of view with its characteristic fatalism and equability of temper. Four of these stories are told with the utmost economy of means and a grim pleasure in watching events unshape themselves. "A Simple Act of Piety" seemed to me one of the best short stories of 1918. The other volume is of more uneven quality, and psychic stories do not furnish Mr. Abdullah with his most natural medium, but contains at least three admirable stories.
#Hand-Made Fables#, by George Ade. (Doubleday, Page & Company.) Mr. Ade's new series of thirty fables are a valuable record of the war years in American life. They are written in a unique idiom full of color, if unintelligible to the foreigner. I think one may fairly say that Mr. Ade's work is thoroughly characteristic of a large section of American culture, and this section he has portrayed admirably. Undoubtedly he is our best satirist.
#Joy in the Morning#, by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews (Charles Scribner's Sons). This uneven collection includes two admirable stories, "The Ditch" and "Dundonald's Destroyer," to which I drew attention when they first appeared in magazines. The latter is one of the best realized legends suggested by the war, while the former is technically interesting as a thoroughly successful short story written entirely in dialogue. The other stories are of slighter content, and emotionally somewhat overtaut.
#Youth and the Bright Medusa#, by Willa Cather (Alfred A. Knopf). Fifteen years ago, Miss Cather published a volume of short stories entitled "The Troll Garden." This volume has long been out of print, although its influence may be seen in the work of many contemporary story writers. The greater part of its contents is now reprinted in the present volume, together with four new stories of less interest. These eight studies, dealing for the most part with the artistic temperament, are written with a detached observation of life that clearly reveals the influence of Flaubert on the one hand and of Henry James on the other, but there is a quality of personal style built up out of nervous rhythms and an instinctive reticence of personal attitude which Miss Cather only shares with Sherwood Anderson among her American compatriots. She is more assured in the traditional quality of her work than Anderson, but hardly less astringent. I regard this book as one of the most important contributions to the American short story published during the past year, and personally I consider it more significant than her four admirable novels.
#From Place to Place#, by Irvin S. Cobb (George H. Doran Company). I have frequently had occasion to point out in the past that Mr. Cobb's work, in depth of conception and breadth of execution, makes him the legitimate successor of Mark Twain as a painter of the ampler life of the American South and Middle West. In his new collection of nine stories, there are at least three which I confidently believe are destined to last as long as the best stories of Hawthorne and Poe. The most noteworthy of these is "Boys Will Be Boys," which I printed in a previous volume of this series. "The Luck Piece" and "The Gallowsmith," though sharply contrasted in subject matter, reveal the same profound understanding of American life which makes Mr. Cobb almost our best interpreter in fiction to readers in other countries. Like Mark Twain, Mr. Cobb is quite uncritical of his own work, and two of these stories are of merely ephemeral value. I should like no better task than to edite a selection of Mr. Cobb's stories in one volume for introduction to the English public, and I think that such a volume would be the best service American letters could render to English letters at the present moment.
#The Life of the Party#, by Irvin S. Cobb (George H. Doran Company). I shall claim no special literary quality for this short story which Mr. Cobb has reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, but America usually shows such poverty in producing humorous stories that the infectious quality of this wildly improbable adventure makes the story seem better than it really is. It cannot be regarded as more than a diversion from Mr. Cobb's rich human studies of American life.
#Hiker Joy#, by James B. Connolly (Charles Scribner's Sons). This series of stories about a little New York wharf-rat which Mr. Connolly has reprinted from Collier's Weekly are less important than the admirable stories of the Gloucester fishermen which first made his reputation. They are told by the wharf-rat in dialect with a casual reportorial air which is tolerably convincing, and it is clear that they are based on a background of first-hand experience. Mr. Connolly's hand is not entirely subdued to the medium in which he has chosen to work, but the result is a certain monotony of interest.
#Twelve Men#, by Theodore Dreiser (Boni & Liveright). These twelve portraits which Mr. Dreiser has transferred to us from life represent his impressions of life's crowded thoroughfares and his reactions to many human contacts. More than one of these portraits can readily be traced to its original, and taken as a group they represent as valuable a cross-section Of our hurrying civilization as we have. Strictly speaking, however, they are not short stories, but discursive causeries on friends of Mr. Dreiser. They answer to no usual concepts of literary form, but have necessitated the creation of a new form. They reflect a gallic irony compact of pity and understanding. The brief limitations of his form prevent Mr. Dreiser from falling into errors which detract somewhat from the greatness of his novels, and as a whole I command this volume to the discriminating reader.
#The Emperor of Elam, and Other Stories#, by H. G. Dwight (Doubleday, Page & Company). Those who read Mr. Dwight's earlier volume entitled "Stamboul Nights" will recall the very real genius for the romantic presentation of adventure in exotic backgrounds which the author revealed. Every detail, if studied, was quietly set down without undue emphasis, and the whole was a finished composition. In the title story of the present volume, and in "The Emerald of Tamerlane," written in collaboration with John Taylor, Mr. Dwight is on the same familiar ground. I had occasion three years ago to reprint "The Emperor of Elam" in an earlier volume of this series, and it still seems to be worthy to set beside the best of Gautier. There are other stories in the present collection with the same rich background, but I should like to call particular attention to Mr. Dwight's two masterpieces, "Henrietta Stackpole Rediviva" and "Behind the Door." The former ranks with the best half-dozen American short stories, and the latter with the best half-dozen short stories of the world. I regard this volume as the most important which I have encountered since I began to publish my studies of the American short story.
#The Miller's Holiday: Short Stories From the North Western Miller#, Edited by Randolph Edgar (The Miller Publishing Company: Minneapolis). These fourteen stories reprinted from the files of the North Western Miller between 1883 and 1904 recall an interesting episode in the history of American literature. The paper just mentioned was the first trade journal to publish at regular intervals the best short stories procurable at the time, and out of this series was born "The Bellman," which for many years was the best literary weekly of general interest in the Middle West. The North Western Miller printed the best work of O. Henry, Howard Pyle, Octave Thanet, James Lane Allen, Hamlin Garland, Edward Everett Hale, and many others, and it was here that Frank R. Stockton first printed "The Christmas Wreck," which I should agree with the late Mr. Howells in regarding as Stockton's best story. I trust that the success of this volume will induce Mr. Edgar to edite and reprint one or more series of stories from "The Bellman." Such an undertaking would fill a very real need.
#Half Portions#, by Edna Ferber (Doubleday, Page & Company). Edna Ferber shares with Fannie Hurst the distinction of portraying the average American mind in its humbler human relations. Less sure than Miss Hurst in her ability to present her material in artistic form, her observation is equally keen and accurate, and in at least two stories in the present volume she seems to meet Miss Hurst on equal ground. "The Maternal Feminine," in my opinion, ranks with "The Gay Old Dog" as Miss Ferber's best story.
#The Best Psychic Stories#, Edited by Joseph Lewis French, with an Introduction by Dorothy Scarborough (Boni & Liveright). This very badly edited collection of stories is worth having because of the fact that it reprints certain admirable short stories by Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, and Fiona Macleod. If it attains to a second edition, the volume would be tremendously improved by omitting the compilation of irrelevant theosophical articles on the subject, and the substitution for them of other stories which lie open to Mr. French's hand in rich measure.
#Fantastics, and Other Fancies#, by Lafcadio Hearn, Edited by Charles Woodward Hutson (Houghton Mifflin Company). This collection of stories, portraits, and essays which Mr. Hutson's industry has rescued from the long-lost files of The New Orleans Daily Item and The Times-Democrat belong to Hearn's early manner, when he sought to set down brief colored impressions of the old, hardly lingering Creole life which is now only a memory. In many ways akin to the art of Hérédia, they show a less classical attitude toward their subject-matter, and are frankly experimental approaches to the method of evocation by sounds and perfumes which he achieved so successfully in his later Japanese books. In these stories we may see the influence of Gautier's enamelled style already at work, operating with more precision than it was later to show, more fearful of the penumbra than his later ghost stories, and with a certain hurried air which may be largely set down to the journalistic pressure of writing weekly for newspapers. Notwithstanding this, many of the stories and sketches are a permanent addition to Hearn's work.
#Waifs and Strays: Twelve Stories#, by O. Henry (Doubleday, Page & Company). This volume of collectanea is divided into two parts. First of all, twelve new stories have been recovered from magazine files. Three of these are negligible journalism, and six others are chiefly interesting either as early studies for later stories, or for their biographical value. "The Cactus" and "The Red Roses of Tonia," however, rank only second to "O. Henry's" best dozen stories. The second part of the book is a miscellany of critical and biographical comment, including also some verse tributes to the story writer's memory and a valuable index to the collected edition of "O. Henry's" stories.
#O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories#, 1919, Chosen by the Society of Arts and Sciences, with an introduction by Blanche Colton Williams (Doubleday, Page & Company). The Society of Arts and Sciences of New York City has had the admirable idea of editing an annual volume of the best American short stories, and awarding annual prizes for the two best stories as a memorial to the art of "O. Henry." The present volume reprints fifteen stories chosen by the society, including the two prize stories,--"England to America," by Margaret Prescott Montague, and "For They Know Not What They Do," by Wilbur Daniel Steele. Five other stories by Mrs. Frances Gilchrist Wood, Miss Fannie Hurst, Miss Louise Rice, Miss Beatrice Ravenel, and Miss G. F. Alsop are admirable stories. The selection represents a fair cross-section of the year's short stories, good, bad, and indifferent, but the two prizes seem to me to have been most wisely awarded, and I conceive this formal annual tribute to be the most significant and practical means of encouraging the American short story. Toward this encouragement the public may contribute in their measure, as I understand that the royalties which accrue from the sale of this volume are to be applied to additional prizes in future years.
#The Happy End#, by Joseph Hergesheimer (Alfred A. Knopf). Mr. Hergesheimer's new collection of seven stories is largely drawn from the files of The Saturday Evening Post, and represents to some degree a compromise with his public. The book is measurably inferior to "Gold and Iron," but shows to a degree the same qualities of studied background and selective presentation of aspects in character which are most satisfyingly presented in his novels. In "Lonely Valleys," "Tol'able David," and "The Thrush in the Hedge," Mr. Hergesheimer's art is more nearly adequate than in the other stories, but they lack the authoritative presentation which made "The Three Black Pennys" a landmark in contemporary American fiction. They show the author to be a too frank disciple of Mr. Galsworthy in the less essential aspect of the latter's art, and their tone is too neutral to be altogether convincing.
#War Stories#, Selected and Edited by Roy J. Holmes and A. Starbuck (Thomas Y. Crowell Company). This anthology of twenty-one American short stories about the war would have gained measurably by compression. At least five of the stories are unimportant, and six more are not specially representative of the best that is being done. But "Blind Vision," "The Unsent Letter," "His Escape," "The Boy's Mother" and "The Sixth Man" are now made accessible in book form, and give this anthology its present value.
#The Great Modern American Stories: An Anthology#, Compiled and edited with an introduction by William Dean Howells (Boni & Liveright). This is the best anthology of the American short story from about 1860 to 1910 which has been published, or which is likely to be published. It represents the mellow choice of an old man who was the contemporary, editor, and friend of most American writers of the past two generations, and in his reminiscent introduction Mr. Howells relates delightfully many of his personal adventures with American authors. Several of these stories will be unfamiliar to the general reader, and I am specially glad to observe in this volume two little-known masterpieces,--"The Little Room" by Madelene Yale Wynne, and "Aunt Sanna Terry," by Landon R. Dashiell. Mr. Howells' choice has been studiously limited to short stories of the older generation, and without infringing on his ground, it is to be hoped that a second series of "Great Modern American Stories" by more recent writers should be issued by the same publishers. The present volume contains an excellent bibliographical chapter on the history of the American short story, and an appendix with biographies and bibliographies of the writers included, which calls for more accurate revision.
#Bedouins#, by James Huneker (Charles Scribner's Sons). While this is primarily a volume of critical essays on painting, music, literature and life, it concludes with a series of seven short stories which serve as a postlude to Mr. Huneker's earlier volume, "Visionaries." They are chiefly interesting as the last dying glow of symbolism, derivative as they are from Huysmans and Mallarme. I cannot regard them as successful stories, but they have a certain experimental value which comes nearest to success in "The Cardinal's Fiddle."
#Humoresque#, by Fannie Hurst (Harper & Brothers). Miss Hurst's fourth volume of short stories shows a certain recession from her previous high standard, except for the title story which is told with an economy of detail unusual for her. All of these eight stories are distinctive, and six of them are admirable, but I seem to detect a tendency toward the fixation of a type, with a corresponding diminishment of faithful individual portrayal. The volume would make the reputation of a lesser writer, but Miss Hurst is after all the rightful successor of "O Henry," and we are entitled to demand from her nothing less than her best.
#Legends#, by Walter McLaren Imrie (The Midland Press, Glennie, Alcona Co., Mich.). I should like to call special attention to this little book by a medical officer in the Canadian army, because it seems to me to be a significant footnote to the poignant records of Barbusse, Duhamel, and Élie Faure. So far as I know, this is the only volume of fiction written in English portraying successfully from the artist's point of view the acrid monotony of war. I believe that it deserves to be placed on the same bookshelf as the volumes of the others whom I have just mentioned.
#Travelling Companions#, by Henry James (Boni & Liveright). These seven short stories by Henry James, which are now collected for the first time with a somewhat inept introduction by Albert Mordell, were written at the same time as the stories in his "Passionate Pilgrim." While they only serve to reveal a minor aspect of his genius, they are of considerable importance historically to the student of his literary evolution. Published between 1868 and 1874, they represent the first flush of his enthusiasm for the older civilization of Europe, and especially of Italy. He would not have wished them to be reprinted, but the present editor's course is justified by their quality, which won the admiration at the time of Tennyson and other weighty critics. Had Henry James reprinted them at all, he would have doubtless rewritten them in his later manner, and we should have lost these first clear outpourings of his sense of international contrasts.
#The Best American Humorous Short Stories#, Edited by Alexander Jessup (Boni & Liveright). This collection of eighteen humorous short stories furnish a tolerable conspectus of the period between 1839 and the present day. They are prefaced by an informative historical introduction which leaves little to be desired from the point of view of information. The general reader will find the book less interesting than the specialist, since a large portion of the volume is devoted to the somewhat crude beginnings of humor in our literature. Apart from the stories by Edward Everett Hale, Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton, Bret Harte, and "O. Henry," the comparative poverty of rich understanding humor in American fiction is remarkable. The most noteworthy omission in the volume is the neglect of Irvin S. Cobb.
#John Stuyvesant Ancestor and Other People#, by Alvin Johnson (Harcourt, Brace & Howe). This collection of sketches, largely reprinted from the New Republic, is rather a series of studies in social and economic relations than a group of short stories. But they concern us here because of Mr. Johnson's penetrating analysis of character, which constitutes a document of no little value to the imaginative student of our institutions, and "Short Change" has no little value as a vividly etched short story.
#Under the Rose#, by Arthur Johnson (Harper & Brothers). With the publication of this volume, Mr. Johnson at last takes his rightful place among the best of the American short story writers who wish to continue the tradition of Henry James. In subtlety of portraiture he is the equal of Edith Wharton, and he excels her in ease and in his ability to subdue his substance to the environment in which it is set. He surpasses Mrs. Gerould by reason of the variety of his subject matter, and as a stylist he is equal to Anne Douglas Sedgwick. I have published two of these stories in previous volumes of this series, and there are at least four other stories in the volume which I should have liked to reprint.
#Going West#, by Basil King (Harper & Brothers). We have in this little book a reprint of one of the best short stories produced in America by the war. While it is emotionally somewhat overtaut, it has a good deal of reticence in portrayal, and there is a passion in it which transcends Mr. King's usual sentimentality.
#Civilization: Tales of the Orient#, by Ellen N. La Motte (George H. Doran Company). Miss La Motte is the most interesting of the new American story writers who deal with the Orient. She writes out of a long and deep background of experience with a subtle appreciation of both the Oriental and the Occidental points of view, and has developed a personal art out of a deliberately narrowed vision. "On the Heights," "Prisoners," "Under a Wineglass," and "Cosmic Justice" are the best of these stories. So definite a propagandist aim is usually fatal to fiction, but Miss La Motte succeeds by deft suggestion rather than underscored statement.
#Short Stories of the New America#, Selected and Edited by Mary A. Laselle (Henry Holt and Company). While this is primarily a volume of supplementary reading for secondary schools, compiled with a view to the "americanization" of the immigrant, it contains four short stories of more or less permanent value, three of which I have included in previous volumes of this series. It also draws attention to the admirable Indian stories of Grace Coolidge. The volume would be improved if three of these stories were omitted.
#Chill Hours#, by Helen Mackay (Duffield and Company). We have come to expect from Mrs. Mackay a somewhat tense but restrained mirroring of little human accidents, in which action is of less importance than its effects. She has a dry, nervous, unornamented style which sets down details in separate but related strokes which build up a picture whose art is not altogether successfully concealed. The present volume, which reflects Mrs. Mackay's experiences in France during the war, is more even in quality than her previous books, and "The Second Hay," "One or Another," and "He Cost Us So Much" are noteworthy stories.
#Children in the Mist#, by George Madden Martin (D. Appleton & Company), and #More E. K. Means# (G. P. Putnam's Sons). Both of these volumes represent traditional attitudes of the Southern white proprietor to the negro, and both fail in artistic achievement because of their excessive realization of the gulf between the two races. Mrs. Martin's book is the more artistic and the less sympathetic, though it has more professions of sympathy than that of Mr. Means. They both display considerable talent, the one in historical portraiture of reconstruction times, and the other in genial caricature of the more childish side of the less-educated negro. The negroes whom Mr. Means has invented have still to be born in the flesh, but there is an infectious humor in his nightmare world which he may plead as a justification for the misuse of his very real ability.
#The Gift, England to America#, and #Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge#, by Margaret Prescott Montague (E.P. Dutton & Company, and Doubleday, Page & Company). These three short stories are all spiritual studies of human reactions and moods generated by the war, set down with a deft hand in a neutral style, somewhat over-repressed perhaps, but thoroughly successful in the achievement of what Miss Montague set out to do. The second and best of these won the first prize offered last year as a memorial to "O. Henry" by The Society of Arts and Sciences of New York City. Good as it is, I am tempted to disagree with its interpretation of the English attitude toward America in general, although it may very well be true in many an individual case. Miss Montague suffers from a certain imaginative poverty which is becoming more and more characteristic of puritan art and life in America. From the point of view of style, however, these stories share distinction in the Henry James tradition only with Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Arthur Johnson and H. G. Dwight.
#From the Life#, by Harvey O'Higgins (Harper & Brothers). This volume should be read in connection with "Twelve Men," by Theodore Dreiser. Where Mr. Dreiser identifies himself with his subjects, Mr. O'Higgins stands apart in the most strict detachment. These nine studies in contemporary American life take as their point of departure in each case some tiny and apparently insignificant happening which altered the whole course of a life. Artists, actors, politicians, and business men all date their change of fortune from some ironic accident, and in three of these nine stories the author's analysis merits close re-reading by students of short story technique. Behind the apparent looseness of structure you will find a new and interesting method of presentation which is as effective as it is deliberate. I regard "From the Life" as one of the more important books of 1919.
#The Mystery at the Blue Villa#, by Melville Davisson Post (D. Appleton and Company), and #Silent, White and Beautiful#, by Tod Robbins (Boni and Liveright). These two volumes furnish an interesting contrast. The subject-matter of both is rather shoddy, but Mr. Post displays a technique in the mystery story which is quite unrivalled since Poe in its inevitable relentlessness of plot based on human weakness, while Mr. Robbins shows a wild fertility of imagination of extraordinary promise, although it is now wasted on unworthy material. I think that both books will grip the reader by their quality of suspense, and I shall look forward to Mr. Robbins' next book with eager interest.
#The Best Ghost Stories.# Introduction by Arthur B. Reeve (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). Mr. French's new collection of ghost stories supplements his volume entitled "Great Ghost Stories," published in the previous year. I consider it the better collection of the two, and should particularly like to call attention to the stories by Leopold Kompert and Ellis Parker Butler. The latter is Mr. Butler's best story and has, so far as I know, not been reprinted elsewhere. For the rest, the volume ranges over familiar ground.
#High Life#, by Harrison Rhodes (Robert M. McBride & Co.). Setting aside the title story which, as a novelette, does not concern us here, this volume is chiefly noteworthy for the reprint of "Spring-Time." When I read this story for the first time many years ago, it seemed to me one that Mr. Arthur Sherburne Hardy would have been proud to sign. It is not perhaps readily realized how difficult it is to write a story so deftly touched with sentiment, while maintaining the necessary economy of personal emotion. "The Sad Case of Quag" exemplifies the gallic aspect of Mr. Rhodes' talent.
#The Red Mark#, by John Russell (Alfred A. Knopf). This uneven volume of short stories by a writer of real though undisciplined talent is full of color and kaleidoscopic hurrying of events. Apart from "The Adversary," which is successful to a degree, the book is uncertain in its rendering of character, though Mr. Russell's handling of plot leaves little to be desired.
#The Pagan#, by Gordon Arthur Smith (Charles Scribner's Sons). It was expected that when Mr. Smith's first volume of short stories should appear, it would take its place at once as pre-eminent in the romantic revival which is beginning to be apparent in the American short story. This volume does not disappoint our expectations, although it would have gained in authority had it been confined to the five Taillandy Stories, "Jeanne, the Maid," and "The Return." Mr. Smith's output has always been wisely limited, and "The Pagan" represents the best work of nine years. These stories are only second in their kind to those of James Branch Cabell and Stephen French Whitman.
#The Elder's People#, by Harriet Prescott Spofford (Houghton, Mifflin Company). Mrs. Spofford has collected in this volume the best among the short stories which she has written since 1904, and the collection shows no diminution in her powers of accurate and tender observation of New England folk. These fourteen prose idyls have a mellow humanism which portrays the last autumn fires of a dying tradition. They rank with the best work of Miss Jewett and Mrs. Spofford herself in the same kind, and are a permanent addition to the small store of New England literature. I wish to call special attention to "An Old Fiddler," "A Village Dressmaker," and "A Life in a Night."
#The Valley of Vision#, by Henry van Dyke (Charles Scribner's Sons). This volume of notes for stories rather than stories themselves calls for no particular comment save for two admirable fugitive studies entitled "A Remembered Dream" and "The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France." These seem to me creditable additions to the small store of American legends which the war produced, but the other stories and sketches are rather bloodless. They are signs of the spiritual anæmia which is so characteristic of much of American life.
#The Ninth Man#, by Mary Heaton Vorse (Harper & Brothers). When this story was published in Harper's Magazine six years ago, it attracted wide attention as a vividly composed presentment of human passions in a mediæval scene. The allegory was not stressed unduly, and was perhaps taken into less account then than it will be now. But events have since clarified the story in a manner which proves Miss Vorse to have been curiously prophetic. In substance it is very different from what we have come to associate with her work, but I think that its modern social significance will now be obvious to any reader. Philosophy aside, I commend it as an admirably woven story.
#Anchors Aweigh#, by Harriet Welles (Charles Scribner's Sons). I think the chief value of this volume is as a quiet record of experience without any remarkable qualities of plot and style, but it is full of promise for the future, and in "Orders" Mrs. Welles has written a memorable story. The introduction by the Secretary of the Navy rather overstates the case, but I think no one will deny the genuine feeling and truth with which Mrs. Welles has presented her point of view.
#Ma Pettengill#, by Harry Leon Wilson (Doubleday, Page & Company). I must confess that temperamentally I am not inclined to rank these humorous stories of American life as highly as many critics. I grant their sincerity of portraiture, but they show only too plainly the signs of Mr. Wilson's compromise with his large audience in The Saturday Evening Post. They are written, however, with the author's eye on the object, and Ma Pettengill herself is vividly realized.
#Hungry Hearts#, by Anzia Yezierska (Houghton Mifflin Company). When I reprinted "Fat of the Land" last year I stated that it seemed to me perhaps the finest imaginative contribution to the short story made by an American artist last year. My opinion is confirmed by Miss Yezierska's first collection of stories, and particularly by "Hunger," "The Miracle," and "My Own People." I know of no other American writer who is driven by such inevitable compulsion to express her ideal of what America might be, and it serves to underscore the truth that the chief idealistic contribution to American life comes no longer from the anæmic Anglo-Saxon puritan, but from the younger elements of our mixed racial culture. Such a flaming passion of mingled indignation and love for America embodies a message which other races must heed, and proves that there is a spiritual America being born out of suffering and oppression which is destined to rule before very long.
II. #English and Irish Authors#
#Windmills: A Book of Fables#, by Gilbert Cannan (B. W. Huebsch, Inc.). This is the first American edition of a book published in London in 1915. Conceived as a new "Candide," it is a bitter satire on war and international politics. While it ostensibly consists of four short stories, they have a unity of action which is sketched rather than fully set forth. In fact, the volume is really a notebook for a larger work. Set beside the satire of Voltaire, Mr. Cannan's master, it is seen to fail because of its lack of kindly irony. In fact, it is a little overdone.
#The Eve of Pascua#, by "Richard Dehan" (George H. Doran Company). Two years ago I had occasion to call attention to the quite unstressed romanticism of Mrs. Graves' "Under the Hermes." The present volume is of much less significance, and I only mention it because of the title story, which is an adequately rendered picture of contemporary Spanish life, much less overdrawn than the other stories.
#Poems and Prose#, of Ernest Dowson (Boni and Liveright). Five of the nine short stories by Ernest Dowson are included in this admirable reprint, but it omits the better stories which appeared in The Savoy, and in a later edition I suggest that the poems be printed in a volume by themselves with Mr. Symons' memoir, and all the stories in another volume which should include among others "The Dying of Francis Donne" and "Countess Marie of The Angels."
#The Golden Bird and Other Sketches#, by Dorothy Eastern, with a foreword by John Galsworthy (Alfred A. Knopf). These forty short sketches of Sussex and of France are rendered deftly with a faithful objectivity of manner which has not barred out the essential poetry of their substance. These pictures are lightly touched with a quiet brooding significance, as if they had been seen at twilight moments in a dream world in which human relationships had been partly forgotten. They are frankly impressionistic, except for the group of French stories, in which Miss Easton has sought more definitely to interpret character. The danger of this form is a certain preciosity which the author has skilfully evaded, and the influence of Mr. Galsworthy is nowhere too clearly apparent. I recommend the volume as one of the best English books which has come to us during the past year.
#My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh People#, by Caradoc Evans (Harcourt, Brace and Howe). In his third collection of stories, Mr. Evans has for the most part forsaken his study of the Cardigan Bay peasant for the London Welsh, and although his style preserves the same stark biblical notation as before, it seems less suited to record the ironies of an industrial civilization. Allowing for this, and for Mr. Evans' bent towards an unduly acid estimate of human nature, it must be confessed that these stories have a certain permanent literary quality, most successful in "Earthbred," "Joseph's House," and "A Widow Woman." These three collections make it tolerably clear that Mr. Evans will find his true medium in the novel, where an epic breadth of material is at hand to fit his epic breadth of speech.
#Tatterdemalion#, by John Galsworthy (Charles Scribner's Sons). This volume contains the ripest product of Mr. Galsworthy's short story art during the past seven years. Its range is very wide, and in these twenty-three stories, we have the best of the mystical war legends from "The Grey Angel" to "Cafard," the gentle irony of "The Recruit" and "Defeat," and the gracious vision of "Spindleberries," "The Nightmare Child," and "Buttercup-Night." Nowhere in the volume do we find the slight touch of sentimentality which has marred the strength of Mr. Galsworthy's later novels, but everywhere very quietly realised pictures of a golden age which is still possible to his imagination, despite the harsh conflict with material realities which his art has often encountered. Perhaps the best story in the present collection is "Cafard," where Mr. Galsworthy has almost miraculously succeeded in extracting the last emotional content out of a situation in which a single false touch of sentiment would have wrecked his story.
#Limbo#, by Aldous Huxley (George H. Doran Company). This collection of six fantasies in prose and one play has no special principle of unity except its attempt to apply the art of Laforgue to much less adequate material. Setting aside "Happy Families" as entirely negligible, and "Happily Ever After" and "Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers" as qualified successes, the other four stories do achieve more or less what they set out to do, although Mr. Huxley only achieves a personal synthesis of style and substance in "The Death of Lully." The other three stories are full of promise as yet unrealised because of Mr. Huxley's inability or unwillingness to conceal the technique of his art.
#Deep Waters#, by W. W. Jacobs (Charles Scribner's Sons). Mr. Jacobs' formula is not yet outworn, but it is becoming perilously uncertain. His talent has always been a narrow one, but in his early volumes his realization of character was quite vivid, and his plot technique superb. At least two of these stories are entirely mechanical, and the majority do not rise above mediocrity. "Paying Off," "Sam's Ghost," and "Dirty Work" faintly recall Mr. Jacobs' early manner.
#Lo, and Behold Ye!#, by Seumas MacManus (Frederick A. Stokes Company). Many of these chimney-corner stories are older than Homer, but Mr. MacManus has retold them in the language of the roads, and this pageant of tinkers and kings, fairies and scholars, lords and fishermen march by to the sound of the pipes and the ribald comments of little boys along the road. The quality of this volume is as fresh as that of those first Donegal fairy stories which Mr. McClure discovered twenty-five years ago. I think that the best of these stories are "The Mad Man, The Dead Man, and the Devil," "Dark Patrick's Blood-horse," and "Donal O'Donnell's Standing Army," but this is only a personal selection.
#The Clintons, and Others#, by Archibald Marshall (Dodd, Mead and Company). I believe that this is Mr. Marshall's first volume of short stories, and they have a certain interest as a quiet chronicle of an old social order which has gone never to return. The comparison of Mr. Marshall's work with that of Anthony Trollope is as inevitable as it is to the former's disadvantage. This volume shows honest, sincere craftsmanship, and never rises nor falls below an average level of mediocrity.
#The Man Who Understood Women#, and #While Paris Laughed#, by Leonard Merrick (E. P. Dutton and Company). These two volumes of the collected edition of Mr. Merrick's novels and stories are of somewhat uneven value. The best of them have a finish which is unsurpassed in its kind by any of his English contemporaries, but there are many stories in the first of these two volumes which are somewhat ephemeral. Mr. Locke in his introduction to "The Man Who Understood Women" rather overstates Mr. Merrick's case, but at his best these stories form an interesting English parallel to the work of O. Henry. The second volume suffers the fate of all sequels in endeavouring to revive after a lapse of years the pranks and passions of the poet Tricotrin. The first five stories in the volume, while they do not attain the excellence of "The Tragedy of a Comic Song," are worthy stories in the same kind. The other seven stories are frankly mawkish in content, although redeemed by Mr. Merrick's excellent technique.
#Workhouse Characters#, by Margaret Wynne Nevinson (The Macmillan Company). This collection of newspaper sketches written during the past fifteen years have no pretensions to art, and were written with a frankly propagandist intention. The vividness of their portraiture and the passion of their challenge to the existing social order warrant their mention here, and I do not think they will be forgotten readily by those who read them. This volume has attracted little comment in the American press, and it would be a pity if it is permitted to go out of print over here.
#The New Decameron#: Volume the First (Robert M. McBride & Co.). There is more to be said for the idea which prompted these stories than for the success with which the idea has been carried out. A group of tourists seeking adventures on the Continent agree to beguile the tedium of the journey by telling each other tales. Unfortunately the Nightingale does not sing on, and the young Englishmen and women who have collaborated in this volume have gone about their task in a frankly amateurish spirit. The stories by W. F. Harvey and Sherard Vines attain a measured success, and some mention may be made of M. Storm-Jameson's story, "Mother-love." It is to be hoped that in future volumes of the series, the editor will choose his contributors more carefully, and frankly abandon the Decameron structure, which has been artificially imposed after the stories were written.
#Wrack, and Other Stories#, by "Dermot O'Byrne" (Dublin: The Talbot Press, Ltd.), #The Golden Barque, and the Weaver's Grave#, by Seumas O'Kelly (Dublin: The Talbot Press, Ltd.), and #Eight Short Stories#, by Lennox Robinson (Dublin: The Talbot Press, Ltd.). As these three volumes are not published in America, I only mention them here in the hope that this notice may reach a friendly publisher's eye. Up to a few years ago poetry and drama were the only two creative forms of the Irish Literary Revival. This tide has now ebbed, and is succeeded by an equally significant tide of short story writers. The series of volumes issued by the Talbot Press, of which those I have just named are the most noteworthy, should be promptly introduced to the American public, and I think that I can promise safely that they are the forerunners of a most promising literature.
#The Old Card#, by Roland Pertwee (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). This series of twelve short stories depict the life of an English touring actor with a quiet artistry of humor suggestive of Leonard Merrick's best work. They are quite frankly studies in sentiment, but they successfully avoid sentimentality for the most part, and in "Eliphalet Cardomay" I feel that the author has created a definitely perceived character.
#Old Junk#, by H. M. Tomlinson (Alfred A. Knopf). It is not my function here to point out that "Old Junk" is one of the best volumes of essays published in recent years, but simply to direct attention to the fact that it includes two short stories, "The Lascar's Walking-Stick" and "The Extra Hand," which are fine studies in atmospheric values. I think that the former should find a place in most future anthologies.
#By Violence#, by "John Trevena" (The Four Seas Company). Although John Trevena's novels have found a small public in America, his short stories are practically unknown. The present volume reprints three of them, of which "By Violence" is the best. In fact, it is only surpassed by "Matrimony" in its revelation of poetic grace and gentle vision. If the feeling is veiled and somewhat aloof from the common ways of men, there is none the less a fine human sympathy concealed in it. I like to think that a new reading of earth may be deciphered from this text.
#Port Allington Stories#, by R. E. Vernède (George H. Doran Company). This volume of stories which is drawn from the late Lieutenant Vernède's output during the past twelve years reveals a genuine talent for the felicitous portrayal of social life in an English village, and suggests that he might have gone rather far in stories of adventure. "The Maze" is the best story in the volume, and makes it clear that a brilliant short story writer was lost in France during the war.
#Holy Fire, and Other Stories#, by Ida A. R. Wylie (John Lane Company). I have called attention to many of these stories in previous years, but now that they are reprinted as a group I must reaffirm my belief that few among the younger English short story writers have such a command of dramatic finality as Miss Wylie. It is true that these stories might have been told with advantage in a more quiet tone. This would have made the war stories more memorable, but perhaps the problem which the book presents for solution is whether or no an instinctive dramatist is using the wrong literary medium. Certainly in "Melia, No Good" her treatment would have been less effective in a play than in a short story.
III. #Translations#
#When the King Loses His Head, and Other Stories#, by Leonid Andreyev. Translated by Archibald J. Wolfe (International Book Publishing Company), and #Modern Russian Classics.# Introduction by Isaac Goldberg (The Four Seas Company). In previous years I have called attention to other selections of Andreyev's stories. The present collection includes the best from the other volumes, with some new material. "Judas Iscariot" and "Lazarus" are the best of the prose poems. "Ben-Tobith," "The Marseillaise," and "Dies Iræ" are the most memorable of his very short stories, while the volume also includes "When The King Loses His Head," and a less-known novelette entitled "Life of Father Vassily." The volume entitled "Modern Russian Classics" includes five short stories by Andreyev, Sologub, Artzibashev, Chekhov, and Gorky.
#Prometheus: the Fall of the House of Limón: Sunday Sunlight: Poetic Novels of Spanish Life#, by Ramón Pérez de Ayala, Prose translations by Alice P. Hubbard: Poems done into English by Grace Hazard Conkling (E. P. Dutton & Co.). Señor Pérez de Ayala has achieved in these three stories what may be quite frankly regarded as a literary form. They do not conform to a single rule of the short story as we have been taught to know it. In fact, this is a pioneer book which opens up a new field. The stories have no plot, no climax, no direct characterization, and at first sight no plan. Presently it appears that the author's apparent episodic treatment of his substance has a special unity of its own woven around the spiritual relations of his heroes. It is hard to judge of an author's style in translation, but the brilliant coloring of his pictures is apparent from this English version. The nearest analogue in English are the fantasies of Norman Douglas, but Pérez de Ayala has a much more profoundly realized philosophy of life. The poems which serve as interludes in these stories, curiously enough, add to the unity of the action.
#The Last Lion, and Other Tales#, by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, with an Introduction by Mariano Joaquin Lorente (The Four Seas Company). The present vogue of Señor Blasco Ibáñez is more sentimental than justified, but in "Luxury" he has written an admirable story, and the other five stories have a certain distinction of coloring.
#The Bishop, and Other Stories#, and #The Chorus Girl, and Other Stories#, by Anton Chekhov; translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett (The Macmillan Company). I have called attention to previous volumes in this edition of Chekhov from time to time. These two new additions to the series carry the English version of the complete tales two-thirds of the way toward completion. Chekhov is one of the three short story writers of the world indispensable to every fellow craftsman, and these nineteen stories are drawn for the most part from the later and more mature period of his work.
#The Surprises of Life#, by Georges Clémenceau; translated by Grace Hall (Doubleday, Page & Company). Although this volume shows a gift of crisp narrative and sharply etched portraiture, it is chiefly important as a revelation of M. Clémenceau's state of mind. Had it been called to the attention of Mr. Wilson before he went to Paris, the course of international diplomacy might have been rather different. These twenty-five stories and sketches one and all reveal a sneering scepticism about human nature and an utter denial of moral values. From a technical point of view, "The Adventure of My Curé" is a successful story.
#Tales of My Native Town#, by Gabriele D'Annunzio; translated by G. Mantellini, with an Introduction by Joseph Hergesheimer (Doubleday, Page & Company). This anthology drawn from various volumes of Signor D'Annunzio's stories gives the American a fair bird's-eye view of the various aspects of his work. These twelve portraits by the Turner of corruption have a severe logic of their own which may pass for being classical. As diploma pieces they are incomparable, but as renderings of life they carry no sense of conviction. Mr. Hergesheimer's introduction is a more or less unsuccessful special plea. While it is perfectly true that the author has achieved what he set out to do, these stories already seem old-fashioned, and as years go on will be read, if at all, for their landscapes only.
#Military Servitude and Grandeur#, by Alfred de Vigny; translated by Frances Wilson Huard (George H. Doran Company). It is curious that this volume should have waited so long for a translator. Alfred de Vigny was an early nineteenth century forerunner of Barbusse and Duhamel, and this record of the Napoleonic wars is curiously analogous to the books of these later men. I call attention to it here because it includes "Laurette," which is one of the great French short stories.
#An Honest Thief, and Other Stories#, by Fyodor Dostoevsky; translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett (The Macmillan Company). This is the eleventh volume in the first collected English edition of Dostoevsky's works. The great Russian novelist was not a consummate technician when he wrote short stories, but the massive epic sweep of his genius clothed the somewhat inorganic substance of his tales with a reality which is masterly in the title story, in "An Unpleasant Predicament," and in "Another Man's Wife." The volume includes among other stories "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," which, though little known, is the key to the philosophy of his greater novels.
#Civilization#, 1914-1917, by Georges Duhamel; translated by E. S. Brooks (The Century Co.). This volume shares with Élie Faure's "La Sainte Face" first place among the volumes of permanent literature produced in France during the war. With more subtle and restrained artistry than M. Barbusse, the author has portrayed the simple chronicles of many of his comrades. He employs only the plainest notation of speech, with an economy not unlike that of Maupassant, and the indictment is the more terrible because of this emphasis of understatement. Before the war, M. Duhamel was known as a competent and somewhat promising poet and dramatist, and he was one of the few to whom the war brought an ampler endowment rather than a numbing silence.
#Czecho-Slovak Stories#, translation by Ŝárka B. Hrbkova (Duffield and Company). I trust that this volume will prove a point of departure for a series of books each devoted to the work of a separate Czecho-Slovak master. Certainly the work of Jan Neruda, Svatopluk Čech, and Caroline SvĚtlá, to name no others, ranks with the best of the Russian masters, and the reader is compelled to speculate as to how many more equally fine writers remain unknown to him. For such stories as these can only come out of a long and conscious tradition of art, and the greater part of these stories are drawn from volumes published during the last half century. The volume contains an admirable historical and critical introduction, and adequate biographies and bibliographies of the authors included.
#Serenus, and Other Stories of the Past and Present#, by Jules Lemaître; translated by "Penguin" (A. W. Evans) (London: Selwyn & Blount). Although this volume has not yet been published in the United States, it is one of the few memorable short story books of the season, and should readily find a publisher over here. Anatole France has prophesied that it will stand out in the history of the thought of the nineteenth century, just as to-day "Candide" or "Zadig" stands out in that of the eighteenth. These fourteen stories are selected from about four times that number, and a complete Lemaître would be as valuable in English as the new translation of Anatole France. The present version is faultlessly rendered by an English stylist who has sought to set down the exact shade of the critic's meaning.
#Tales of Mystery and Horror#, by Maurice Level; translated from the French by Alys Eyre Macklin, with an Introduction by Henry B. Irving (Robert M. McBride & Co.). Mr. Irving's introduction rather overstates M. Level's case. These stories are not literature, but their hard polished technique is as competent as that of Melville Davisson Post, and I suppose that these two men have carried Poe's technique as far as it can be carried with talent. The stories are frankly melodramatic, and wring the last drop of emotion and sentiment out of each situation presented. I think the volume will prove valuable to students of short story construction, and there is no story which does not arrest the attention of the reader.
#The Story of Gotton Connixloo#, followed by #Forgotten#, by Camille Mayran; translated by Van Wyck Brooks (E.P. Dutton & Company). Mr. Brooks' translation of these two stories in the tradition of Flaubert have been a labor of love. They will not attract a large public, but the art of this Belgian writer is flawless, and worthy of his master. Out of the simplest material he has extracted an exquisite spiritual essence, and held it up quietly so as to reflect every aspect of its value. If the first of these two stories is the most completely rounded from a technical point of view, I think that the second points the way toward his future development. He presents his characters more directly, and achieves his revelation through dialogue rather than personal statement.
#Short Stories from the Spanish#; Englished by Charles B. McMichael (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). The present volume contains seven short stories by Rubén Dario, Jacinto Octavio Picón, and Leopoldo Alas. They are wretchedly translated, but even in their present form one can divine the art of "The Death of the Empress of China" by the Nicaraguan Rubén Dario, and "After the Battle" by the Spaniard Jacinto Octavio Picón. The other stories are of unequal value, so far as we can judge from Mr. McMichael's translation.
#The Fairy Spinning Wheel, and the Tales It Spun#, by Catulle Mendès; translated by Thomas J. Vivian (The Four Seas Company). It was a happy thought to reprint this translation of M. Mendès' fairy tales which has been out of print for many years. It is probably the only work of its once renowned author which survives the passage of time. Here he has entered the child's mind and deftly presented a series of legends which suggest more than they state. Their substance is slight enough, but each has a certain symbolic value, and the poetry of M. Mendès' style has been successfully transferred to the English version.
#Temptations#, by David Pinski; translated by Isaac Goldberg (Brentano's). We have already come to know what a keen analyst America has in Mr. Pinski from the translations of his plays which have been published. Here he is much less interested in the surface movement of plot than in the relentless search for motive. To his Yiddish public he seems perhaps the best of short story writers who write in his tongue, and certainly he can hold his own with the best of his contemporaries in all countries. He has the universal note as few English writers may claim it, and he stands apart from his creation with absolute detachment. His work, together with that of Asch, Aleichem, Perez, and one or two others establishes Yiddish as a great literary tongue. A further series of these tales are promised if the present volume meets with the response which it deserves.
#Russian Short Stories#, edited by Harry C. Schweikert (Scott, Foresman and Company). This is a companion volume to Mr. Schweikert's excellent collection of French short stories, and ranges over a wide field. From Pushkin to Kuprin his selection gives a fair view of most of the Russian masters, and the collection includes a valuable historical and critical introduction, with biographical notes, and a critical apparatus for the student of short story technique. It is of special educational importance as the only volume in the field. In the next edition I suggest that Sologub should be represented for the sake of completeness.
#Iolanthe's Wedding#, by Hermann Sudermann; translated by Adèle S. Seltzer (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). This collection of four minor works by Sudermann contains two excellent stories, one of which is full of folk quality and a kindly irony, and the other more akin to the nervous art of Arthur Schnitzler. "The Woman Who Was His Friend" and "The Gooseherd" are less important, but of considerable technical interest.
#Short Stories from the Balkans#; translated by Edna Worthley Underwood (Marshall Jones Company). This volume should be set beside the collection of "Czecho-Slovak Stories," which I have mentioned on an earlier page. Here will be found further stories by Jan Neruda and Svatopluk Čech, together with a remarkable group of stories by Rumanian, Serbian, Croatian, and Hungarian authors. Neruda emerges as the greatest artist of them all, and one of the greatest artists in Europe, but special attention should be called also to the Czech writer Vrchlický, the Rumanian Caragiale, and the Hungarian Mikszáth. The translation seems competently done.
#Modern Greek Stories#; translated by Demetra Vaka and Aristides Phoutrides (Duffield and Company). While this collection reveals no such undoubted master as Jan Neruda, it is an extremely interesting introduction to an equally unknown literature. Seven of the nine stories are of great literary value, and perhaps the best of these is "Sea" by A. Karkavitsas. Romaic fiction still bears the marks of a young tradition, and each new writer would seem to be compelled to strike out more or less completely for himself. Consequently it is necessary to allow more than usual for technical inadequacy, but the substance of most of these stories is sufficiently remarkable to justify us in wishing a further introduction to Romaic literature.
