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The most curious aspect of the bibliography to my mind is not mnission , however. It is the inclusion of material throughout on binding variants. The reason for the decision to include such material is completely obscure to me. Professor Collie points out that he describes only 'those that have been seen,' and he has obviously not seen a very large number. Two of the three variants of The Shaving of Shagpat, the work with which he begins, which I own are not described and his descriptions of the Shagpat variants completely obscures the fact that at least a dozen variants of the binding of this early work exist. Nowhere is his description of the variants extensive enough to warrant its inclusion and nowhere does it contribute to the reader's knowledge of Meredith bibliography . Two final comments. The proof-reading of this volume is more shocking than I can indicate, though I have tried to illustrate it. But the errors are the kind that ought not to have been made or at least to have been caught by the compiler even if the editor had missed them: eg, there are 2 errors in the 8-line letter from which 5 lines are cited on page "45, a fairly well-known publisher is referred to as Kegan Peul, and a wellknown modern editor is cited in the index as Hergenham, etc. As well, the whole of the final section of Part II, Other Prose, on page 117 is out of place since it seems to be listed under 1966 or as of no date. But some of the items (like Ellis's Life, 1920) are dated and others are clearly misplaced : Cline's article on Marie Vulliamy appeared in NCF, volume 1.6, published in "962. And, of course the reader would undoubtedly have benefited by the omission of Professor Collie's epithets for Meredith. The writer of the dust-jacket refers admiringly to his wry observations. I found them too numerous: I did not want 'querulous,' 'tetchy/ 'muddled,' and 'blustering ' on the same page (257). If Cline's glowing tribute to Meredith in the conclusion of his introduction was impossible for Collie, silence would by comparison have been golden. (HARVEY KERPNECK) W.J. Keith, The Rural Tradition, A Study of the Non-fiction Writers of the English Countryside. University of Toronto Press, xiv, 310, $1.5.00 Professor Keith's The Rural Tradition opens with a short but admirably succinct essay on the kinds of writing he is about to analyse and discuss, and some of the difficulties facing a critic trying to relate a number of writers whose only obvious common quality is their intimate love and knowledge of the English countryside. The body of his book is a study, in separate chapters, of eleven writers, Walton, Gilbert White, Cobbett, Mrs Milford, Borrow, Jefferies, George Sturt ('George Bourne'), Hudson, Edward Thomas, Henry Williamson, and H.J. Massingham. To write HUMANITIES 395 briefly, knowledgeably, and temperately about such a variety of writers, indicating related themes and attitudes, and with historical knowledge of factual backgrounds and the nature of urban and rural society at different periods, is difficult enough. Even a mediocre but soundly comprehensive survey might be welcome. What immediately strikes a reader of this book (in addition to its knowledge) is not only the clarity and control shown in handling a great variety of material, but the author's literary judgement and skill in bringing out the really central aspects of both basic themes and individual authors. Imaginative (rather than scientific) writers on rural life reveal paradoxical and sometimes contradictory blends of realism, nostalgia, romantic feeling, polemic. Most of them write for urban readers. Mr Keith is consistently discriminating and skilful in pointing up his treatment of essential problems or conflicts by brief and relevant quotation and personal comment: Richard Jefferies writing 'The wheat is beautiful, but human life is labour'; Borrow proclaiming 'The use of the fist is almost lost in England. Yet are the people better than they were when they knew how to use their fists? The writer believes not ... Is polite taste better than when it could bear the details of a fight? The writer...

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