Bibliographies, News, and Notes

274 BIBLIOGRAPHIES, NEWS, AND NOTES Compiled and Edited by H. E. Gerber and Philip Armà to. In the last number of each year's volume we have for several years included a cumulative list of abstracts published under each author's name in all preceding volumes of ELT through the current one. This annual cumulative summary has become cumbersome and space-consuming. Beginning with this number, we shall total only the abstracts we have published this year in the five numbers that make up Volume Vl II. ARNOLD BENNETT James G. Hepburn is still in England edition a multi-volume editing of Bennett letters. Volume VIII Summary: No 2 (2 items). JOHN DAVYS BERESFORD SIR WALTER BESANT WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT Joseph Dunlap (Library, CCNY) is preparing an annotated bibliography of writings about Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. JOHN BUCHAN, LORD TWEEDSMUIR J. Randolph Cox (Library, St. Olaf College) has nearly completed an annotated bibliography of writings about John Buchan and it is being prepared for publication. SAMUEL BUTLER By Phi 1 i ϕ Armato We have been listing only i terns published since the Harkness bibliography (post1953 ). Volume VIII Summary: No 2 (2 items); No 5 (7 items). Armato, Philip. "Butler for Beginners," ELT, VIII: 5 (1965), 310-11 a rev of Lee E. Holt's SAMUEL BUTLER. Geduld, H. M. "Sources and Influences of Shaw's Pentateuch," CALIFORNIA SHAVIAN, V (May-June 1964), 1-10. In course of a discussion of Shaw's BACK TO METHUSALAH, declares that Shaw placed his faith primarily in political machinery, but B was the source of many of Shaw's beliefs, primarily on the role of acquired characteristics in human development and on a purposive drive in evolution. B's ideas are scattered throughout Shaw's work. "Factually, however, Shaw's brief history of evolution [in the preface to METHUSALAH] depends not upon Butler but upon material in Weismann's THE EVOLUTION THEORY (1904)." Shaw's longevity theme owes much to B; however, although it does "quite literally" go back to METHUSELAH, it borrows from Carlyle, Adam Smith, and Lamarck. [Peters] 2 75 Holt, Lee. E. SAMUEL BUTLER. NY: Twtyne Publishers, 1964. See Armato, Philip, "Butler for Beginnars," Karl, Frederick. "Five Victorian Novelists," AN AGE OF FICTION: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITiSH NOVEL, NY: Farrar, Straus and Girous, 1964. Pp. 327-32. In B's THE WAY OF ALL KLESH, Ernest "turns upon all forms of domination" in order to find himself, B believes that happiness is the reward of right decisions. Once Ernest has attained maturity, "he inherits a huge fortune and settles into bourgeois existence; therefore, B rejects "continual struggle" and "heroic defiance." Ernest is successful only because his future is already assured. 'V/hat still counts in the novel... is the criticism of Victorien moral ity„,.." "Whüt is of lesser importance is Butler's positive stance, based as it is on insufferable ideas and people." Knoepflmacher, U, C, RcLIGiOUS HUMANISM AND THt VICTORIAN NOVEL: GEORGE ELIOT, WALTER PATER, AND SAMUEL EUTLER ,"'ri iicoton: Princeton U P, 1965. Pp. 22495 , and index. Comments on B's eaiiy refusal to alienate the respectable, his love of consistency, the relationship fo EREWHON to his thought preceding and following it, ü's later love of taking both sides of a question, his role as reconciler of science and faith, rejection of Christian and Darwinian explanations, "the purposive evolution" he. was r.ioving toward in lieu of Darwinism. EKEWHON1S int.icipntion of later theories, the tenets of B's evolutionary faith as ϕ rosυπted i ι; LIFE /«No HABiT, the fusion of faith and skepticism, the power of the unconscious; discusses THE WAY OF ALL FLESH as related to B's thought in Lire AND HABIT, Overton's refashioning of Ernest, Overton as reason and Theobald as the dream; discusses the "past selves" of Ernest ;nH Ernest's conversion to B's credo, the credo of Ernest Pont i fex, Schoenberg, Robert E, "The Litera!-Minciedness of Samuel Butler," STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, i 500-1900. IV (Autumn 1964), 601-16. B's literalmi ndedness enters into all the phases of his literary career. "The literalminded expectation that insides will always correspond to outsides led him to adopt satire as...