BOOKS and AUTHORS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XXII, 30 May 1896, Page 625

BOOKS and AUTHORS.

A LITERARY CAUSERIE for COLONIAL BOOKBUYERS and BORROWERS. BOOKS marked thus (*) have arrived in the colony, and could at the time of writing be purchased in the principal colonial bookshops, and borrowed at the libraries. For the convenience of country cousins who find difficulty in procuring the latest books and new editions, the * BOOKMAN' will send to any New Zealand address any book which can be obtained. No notice pill, of course, be taken of requests unaccompanied by remittance to cover postage as well as published price of book. It is requested that only those who find it impossible to procure books through the ordinary channels, should take advantage of this offer. The labour involved will be heavy and entirely unremuneratiue, no ★ees or commission being taken. Queries and Correspondence on Literary Matters Invited. AU Communications and Commissions must be addressed THE BOOKMAN,’ Graphic Office, Auckland. This novelette tells the storv of how love Where High- r ... . came, for the first time, to a man well ways Cross into middle age. This man, Thorndyke Hepworth, is of a strong, generous nature and a thoughtful, religious cast of mind, and the love that comes to him so tardily is the love of his life. The woman he loves is a pretty, refined young widow, who acts in the capacity of parlour-maid in his house. They are to be married, but on the eve of the marriage, when the good Hepworth’s happiness seems to him almost greater than he can bear, there falls upon him a thunderbolt out of the blue sky. Ihe nature of this thunderbolt, the fashion in which it affects Hepworth, and his subsequent conduct can all be ascertained by those interested in the matter from the book itself. Where Highways Cross is written in a direct perspicuous style, and except in one instance, without anything that savours of exaggeration. This is a collection of short stories that * ‘ Maureen s , . . , _ . z- . takes its title from the first of them. It Fairing. j s a ver y g 00( j collection of its kind, and in several of the stories the authoress showsan affectionate and humorous understanding of Irish peasant nature which most readers will be quick to appreciate. In ‘The Murphy’s Supper’ there are touches that suggest an Irish Barrie, and the pathos is certainly’ not lessened because of its sordid and undignified adjuncts.

The marriage in question is that of a » ‘The Story . , . ?, j rich country gentleman, young and of a Marriage. ar d en t, cultured and intellectual, brimful of ideas—and crotchets—for making the world better because of his sojourn in it. The other ‘ contracting party ’ in this marriage is a girl of the lower classes, coarse and ignorant, soulless, mindless, and pretty well heartless, but shining with physical beauty. Of course the marriage turns out a failure. Our sympathy with the ill-used husband is not over-power-ing, however, for he forfeited his claim on it by the stupid wilfulness of his pre nuptial self-deception in regard to Bessie’s character. Then again there was a decided suspicion of priggishness in his way of courting her. And still again, though Lawrence Temple was really in love with Bessie, he was almost as much in love with his pet theory that the upper and lower classes of society would be most effectually cemented together by such marriages as his and Bessie’s. This marriage, wh’ch he had intended to be a stimulating example to society, drags along in its inevitably miserable course. Finally it gets dissolved—though not quite in the way we had anticipated from the trend of the story—and then the very’ charming and eligible young lady, sighing hopelessly for Lawrence in the background, has the place which ought to have been hers from the beginning. So we are able to take leave of Lawrence under happy domestic auspices, strenuously working away at his experiments—agricultural and so on—in the interests of mankind. There is much faithful character drawing in The Story of a Marriage, and, despite certain crudities and inconsistencies apparent In the conception and development of

the story, the book is well and carefully written. It is certainly through no lack of painstaking on the part of the author that we have not a real abiding interest in The Story of a Marriage. * • Soldiers Yet another two volumes of Mr KepTh ‘ ‘W pling’s inimitable stories have joined the goodly array of books in Macmillan’s Willie Wmkie. Colonial Library. Soldiers Three comprises, in addition to the collection which gives its title to the volume, the other collection entitled, ‘ln Black and White ’ ; also ‘ The Story of the Gadsbys.’ The Wee Willie Winkle volume has the two clusters of tales, ‘Under the Deodars,’ and‘The Phantom Rickshaw,’ besides the other three stories, with child or boy heroes. It would be a work of supererogation to say anything in detailed praise of all those numerous stories, of which each, almost without exception, is distinctive and of first-class merit in its own way. But we would advise those who have not yet read them not to deprive themselves any longerofthe pleasure of doingso.

> • A Ringby volume of stories, of which the longest is A Ringby Lass, is by no means Lass. without merit, and will certainly meet with the appreciation of the numerous readers who find refreshing and sustaining mental pabulum in the popular works of Edna Lyall and Annie Swan. The last storyin the volume should have a special interest for this class of readers in New Zealand, as the heroine is a Maori. „ This is, in the opinion of many critics, < ‘The Return ’ r J the best of Mr Hardy’s Wessex novels, of the Native. atK l its appearance now in Macmillan’s Colonial Library is sure to make it still more widelyknown and appreciated in this quarter of the world. All Mr Hardy’s novels are permeated with an intimate knowledge of, and intense sympathy,with nature, and in The Return of the Native nature, as represented by Egdon Heath, might be said to become almost a personality—even one of the dramatis persona-, mysteriously related to all the others. The dwellers on and about Egdon Heath, as elsewhere throughout the author’s Wessex, speak, move, and act by instinct rather than by convention. This statement is itself a guarantee that they are interesting people, and that they will, moreover, keep the reader in an interesting state of uncertainty as to how they will conduct themselves in any given situation. The keynote of the tale is the tragic contrariness of things and of human nature. Destiny plays a sad game of cross-purposes throughout, and as it so often happens in life, heavyissues are the result of trifling causes. The end is tragic for several of the chief characters, but in the case of one —Eustacia Vye—the reader perceives that such an end was inevitable and perhaps fitting. There is one bright prospect in the gloom of the masterly picture of spent or fruitless desire and endeavour, and of poignant regret, and that is the reward of Diggory Venn’s staunch, unselfish devotion. We are also encouraged to hope that Clym Yeobright has found his vocation, and will regain his content, and perhaps win some measure of righteous self-applause. Where Highways Cross,’by J. S. Fletcher: Macmillan and Co. ‘ Maureen's Fairing,' by Jane Barlow : Macmillan and Co. • The Story of a Marriage,’ by Mrs Alfred Baldwin ; Macmillan and Co. ‘ Soldiers Three,’ by Rudyard Kipling : Macmillan and Co. - Wee Willie Wilkie,’by Rudyard Kipling : Macmillan and Co. ‘ ‘ A Ringby Lass.’ by Mary Beaumont ; Macmillan and Co. ■ ‘ The Return of the Native,’ by Thomae Hardy : Macmillan and Co.