PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 80, 1 October 1938, Page 27

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

The City Librarian has chosen "Konigsmark," by A. E. W. Mason, as the book of the week, and has furnished the following review.' —

It is very easy in a constant succession of thrills and almost Ruritanian colour to lose sight of the fact that Mr. Mason is writing easily and well and that his prose never falls below a certain level of excellence. He has always been well known as a writer who makes his incident move easily and one who can hold his own in any group of thriller writers. In "Konigsmark" he displays the added faculty of combining a purely historical sequence of events told (one imagines with scrupulous accuracy) with a romantic and colourful romance.

The story is the tale of Sophia Dorothea, the daughter of the Duke of Celle, whose Duchy had been for years administered by a wise and clever Chancellor and whose estates had become vast and wealthy. Unhappily this Chancellor came to the end of his period of usefuhiess, and his place was taken by a Tapacious politician of the scheming, crafty type. The new Chancellor's ambition was to raise the status of the estate to that. of an electorate, and he achieved his end by manipulating a marriage between Princess Sophia Dorothea and George, Elector of Hanover, a princeling who subsequently became George I of England. This diplomatic marriage was fraught with as unhappy consequences as many such unions. Sophia's happiness was bartered away in order to satisfy the ambition of this one man. The tragedy is rendered all the more acute because Sophia loves and is loved in return by Konigsmark, a young, wealthy, and very personable Swedish aristocrat. The resultant tragedy is a most unhappy one. George suspects his wife and Konigsmark. Konigsmark disappears mysteriously, and Sophia spends the last thirty-two years of her life imprisoned at Ahlden. So much is fact.

Mr. Mason, using the methods of the modern school of psychologists, tries to clarify the mystery about this unhappy tale. Certain letters are extant. Konigsmark turns out to be an unusually interesting subject. He was a fifteen-year-old page at the court of Sophia's parents at the time of the beginning of the book and suffered at the hands of the new Chanceller. Mr. Mason deduces that it was partly to salve the wound tp his mastery impulse and to restore his confidence in himself that Konigsmark resolved to win Sophia Dorothea and that this determination ripened into real love.

i Whether or not Mr. Mason's method of applying modern methods of deduction about mental habits and processes to the true stories of the past, is one which would be likely to meet with general' success is a doubtful point. Certainly he has provided us with a solution of this particular tale which is well on all fours with the evidence which he adduces, and, moreover, has written a piece of clever, exciting, and entertaining fiction before a background of actual historical fact in a way which, considering his reliance upon incident rather than upon the complexities and subtleties of i character, leaves the reader in admiration of his skill in treating a subject in which so much psychological probing is called for, with so little visible analysis of character. RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS. Other titles selected from recent accession lists are as follows:—General: "Ends and Means," by A. L. Huxley; "The Fight for Life," by P. H. de Kruif; "Learning to Live," by E. Bryson. Fiction: "The Road to Bagdad," by G. Gibbs; "The Sleepy Duke," by M. Compertz; "Duchess by Appointment," by Lady M. Cameron.