No tale in "The Kiss" is quite as
marvellous as either the first or the last tale in "The Black Monk,"
perhaps; but both volumes are indispensable to one's full education. I do
not exaggerate. I must add that on a reader whose taste is neither highly
developed nor capable of high development, the effect of the stories will
be similar to their effect on the magazine editor.
THE SURREY LABOURER
[_1 Apr. '09_]
It is a great pleasure to see that Mr. George Bourne's "Memoirs of a
Surrey Labourer" (Duckworth) has, after two years, reached the distinction
of a cheap edition at half a crown. I shall be surprised if this book does
not continue to sell for about a hundred years. And yet, also, I am
surprised that a cheap edition should have come so soon. The "Memoirs"
were very well received on their original publication in 1907; some of the
reviews were indeed remarkable in the frankness with which they accepted
the work as a masterpiece of portraiture and of sociological observation.
But the book had no boom such as Mr. John Lane recently contrived for
another very good and not dissimilar book, Mr. Stephen Reynolds's "A Poor
Man's House." Mr. Stephen Reynolds was more chattered about by literary
London in two months than Mr. George Bourne has been in the eight years
which have passed since he published his first book about Frederick
Bettesworth, the Surrey labourer in question.
Pages:
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111