"ESSEX AND ELIZABETH."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14566, 31 December 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

"ESSEX AND ELIZABETH."

Like a fisher in many waters, the novelist of to-day brings back spoil of varied kinds. And no capture that he brings has a rarer charm than the mediaeval tale. In this kind Mr. Maurice Hewlett and Miss Una Silberrad are past-masters. To their school belongs . Miss Marion Fox, whose "Hand of the North " (John Lane, London), following on that- weirdly dreamlike production, "'The Seven Nights," should go a good way towards establishing a reputation. "The Hand of the North" shows unusual gifts -of visualisation, and still more unusual powers of creating atmosphere. The scene opens with the failure of Essex's conspiracy against' Queen Elizabeth, and the consequent banishing of the hero, David Armstrong, to his estates in the north. There in the wild, wind-swept region of the moors the author puts; forth her strength. The story of the death of Armstrong's steward and of the harrying of Red Simon if. told in a series of vivid, picturesque scenes. The tiny details show an uncanny gift of vision that is like the " skyring " of the astrologer, whose foretelling of the future firms a quaint episode in Armstrong's journey to the north. The character-drawing is subtle, perhaps somewhat over-subtle for a book that is mainly pictorial and adventurous, rather than psychological.