“The Library of Famous Literature.”

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue VII, 17 August 1901, Page 321

“The Library of Famous Literature.”

“The Interuational Library of Famous Literature” is an endeavour to present, in a compact form, the cream of all literature. It is a great undertaking. and its success in England has been the event of the iuut publishing season. The general Editor of the “Library” is Dr. Richard Garnett, C. 8.. who. to an encyclopaedic knowledge of books acquired in his long service in the Reading Room of the British Museum, adds a critical skill and an enthusiasm for letters which have already made many charming contributions to contemporary literature. No man could be better equipped for a task so delicate and so difficult. He has been assisted in his labours by M. Leon Vallee, the erudite Librarian of the Bibliotheque Nationale, who has not only brought the fruit of his specialised experience, but has also enriched the Library by the contribution of an admirable study of French literature. Professor Brandl, who occupied the Chair of Literature in the Imperial University of Berlin, has also been associated with Dr. Garnett in the preparation of the Library, nnd has written, for the fourth volume of the work, a study of “The Main Currents of German Literature.” Mr Donald G. Mitchell, who is, perhaps, better known under his familiar pseudonym of “Ik Marvel,” is responsible for those sections of the work which deal with that American literature which, in a good deal less than a working century, has added so extensively to our bookshelves. The plan of the work is simplicity itself. The twenty volumes of “The Library of Famous Literature" contain the best parts of each author’s work, not a ragged extract, but a carefully chosen complete picture in that author’s typical style—enough for half-an-hour’s reading, enough to give the reader the desired sense of an intellectual change of air. More than a thousand of these examples are offered in a handsome and convenient form. Nor is the result a mere compromise. The best thing an author ever wrote is, for the purpose of occasional reading, better than the whole body of his work, since it enables the reader to get at the essence of his creation, without losing time over the straw and chaff which form a part of even the most precious literary growths. The “Library" in

short, endeavours to do the reader's “skipping” for him, perhaps to do it more judiciously than he could himself, and in any case, to do it intelligently and with insight. Five hundred full-page illustrations, printed apart from the letterpress, on enamelled paper, add to the beauty and interest of the volumes. In addition to an original series of portraits of authors in their homes, these, illustrations include a number of coloured reproductions of illuminations from rare mediaeval manuscripts. The twenty volumes contain ten thousand pages of the best work that, has been done in literature since men first struggled to give literary form to their traditions, their fancies, and their invention, from the most ancient fragment of an Egyptian papyrus down to the contemporary work of the American humourist.