Briefer Mention

BRIEFER MENTION Brake, Laurel, ed. The Year's Work in English Studies, 64 (1983). London: John Munay; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1986. $69.00 This evaluative nanative bibliography of scholarly writing in the fields of English and American literature offers an expanded coverage of other literatures in English. Australia, New Zealand, and India have been added to the chapter which already includes Africa, the Caribbean, and Canadian literature in English. A new feature is an extensive list of "Books Received." Says Brake, readers may find "this additional rapid reference information useful for the purchase of books, for research or teaching, or as a handy checklist." ELT readers may wish to refer to Chapter 14 (The Nineteenth Century: Victorian Period), ananged by Verse, Novel, Prose, Drama; also Chapter 15 (The Twentieth Century), ananged by Novel, Verse, and Prose Drama. Eigner, Edwin M., and George J. Worth, eds. Victorian Criticism of the Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Paper $14.95 Editors Eigner and Worth have gathered a representative collection of Victorian criticism, beginning with Edward Bulwer Lytton, and prefaced the thirteen selections with a well-reasoned introduction which gives shape to the whole. The book should prove especially beneficial in courses on the nineteenth-century British novel. ELT readers may wish to note the last four entries in particular: Henry James, "The Art of Fiction" (1884); Robert Louis Stevenson, "A Humble Remonstrance" (1884); Vemon Lee, From "A Dialogue on Novels" (1885); Joseph Comad, "Preface to The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'" (1897). Lewis, Gifford. Somerville and Ross: The World of the Irish R.M. New York: Viking; Harmondsworth Middlesex: Penguin, 1986. £12.95 Professor Harold Orel briefly discusses this latest book on Sommerville and Ross in the "Bibliographical Postscript" to his article on pages 24-25 of this issue. Though Lewis' work does not contain any scholarly apparatus, it offers an interesting, often entertaining view of the authors' world as well as that of their characters—all beautifully illustrated with some 200 pictures, including drawings and paintings by Edith Sommerville. Page, Norman. A Conrad Companion. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986. $22.50 Page's Conrad Companion is a very useful accompaniment to the study and teaching of Conrad. It is, says Page, "intended both for the student who wishes to acquaint himself with the outline of Conrad's career and to gain an overview of his work, and also for the reader who knows his Comad but will often need to check a date, name or fact. . . ." There are several biographical sections followed by chapters devoted to Conrad's fiction and nonfiction as well as a section considering "filmography." Plates, maps and a select bibliography are included. 124 30:1, Briefer Mention and Books Received Poupard, Dennis, ed. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vols. 20 and 21. Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. $88.00 Each We have previously noted volumes from this series which contain critical selections pertinent to 1880-1920 studies. Author entries covering an entire career typically begin with early criticism to indicate initial reactions, followed by later criticism to reflect changes in an author's critical standing; cunent analyses are provided as well. Besides basic bibliographical information, each entry offers a biocritical introduction. Portraits and other illustrations are also included. Volume 20 contains entries on Arnold Bennett, Sheila Kaye-Smith, John Ruskin, and Virginia Woolf. Volume 21 considers, among others, T. E. Hulme and Bernard Shaw. Reed, John R. Victorian Conventions. 1975; Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1986. Paper $15.95 As is our custom, we try to bring reprints to your attention. John Reed's seminal study has been reprinted in an affordable paperback edition. BOOKS RECEIVED Bakker, J. Ernest Hemingway in Holland, 1925-1981: A Comparative Analysis of the Contemporary Dutch and American Reception of His Work. Amsterdam: Rodopi; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1986. Paper $29.95 Benson, C. David. Chaucer's Drama of Style: Poetic Variety and Contrast in the 'Canterbury Tales'. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. $20.00 Bergonzi, Bernard. The Myth of Modernism and Twentieth Century Literature. New York: St. Martin's, 1986. $27.50 Brodhead, Richard H. The School of Hawthorne. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. $24...