Books Received

BOOK REVIEWS little of anything. I managed to recall, not always by names, "good" characters who somehow stood for "lovingkindness," a quality Maugham elevates over truth and beauty at the end of The Summing Up. I remembered, of course, Rosie Driffield of Cakes and Ale; a boy named Salvatore in a story and a girl named Sally in Of Human Bondage, both of whom I seemed to recall evoked "goodness, simple goodness"; and male characters in "Mr. Know-AU" and "Mackintosh" who reverse the reader's contempt by "good" acts at the end. A Companion to the Characters in the Fiction and Drama of W. Somerset Maugham would not have helped me identify these characters. Their entries give not a clue to their deeds. As to compiler Rogal's deeds, he does little to justify any sort of basis for praise other than that of sheer quantification. What is the massive compilation's utility? Who will use this book? Professor Rogal reaches hard for purposes: "In the end, all of Maugham's characters ... need to be gathered and housed within a single source ... as their creator crowded them into [his] pages." Perhaps, but with so little amplification? And, finally, he states vaguely his principal purpose: "[To] provide a vehicle for and to play a role in preserving the 'fashion' in which . . . Maugham wrote, thus helping to keep alive his works through his characters and to save them from 'the exigencies of the publishers and the public.'" This book does little to extend the lives of Maugham's works in the only effective way—by luring the reader back to them. Richard Hauer Costa Texas A&M University I Books Received I Aphra Behn Studies, Janet Todd, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. viii + 334pp. $54.95 Barvauld, Anna Laetitia. Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem. Jonathan Wordsworth, intro. 1812; New York: Woodstock Books, 1996. 25 pp. $40.00 Benedict, Barbara M. Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. ix + 252 pp. $39.50 123 ELT 40:1 1997 Betham, Matilda. The Lay of Marie, a Poem. Jonathan Wordsworth, intro. 1816; New York: Woodstock Books, 1996. 154 pp. $55.00 Bowles, Caroline. TAe Widow's Tale and Other Poems. Jonathan Wordsworth, intro. 1822; New York: Woodstock Books, 1996. 222 pp. $48.00 Bryan, Mary. Sonnets and Metric Tales. Jonathan Wordsworth, intro. 1815; New York: Woodstock Books, 1996. 141 pp. $48.00 Connor, Steven. The English Novel in History 1950-1995. New York: Routledge, 1996. vii + 260pp. Cloth $59.95 Paper $18.95 Edith Wharton Abroad: Selected Travel Writings, 1888-1920. Sarah Bird Wright, ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. xxii + 216 pp. Paper $14.95 Gager, Valerie L. Shakespeare and Dickens: The Dynamics of Influence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xx + 419 pp. $59.95 Goodridge, John. Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xiv + 227 pp. $59.95 Hawes, Clement. Mania and Literary Style: The Rhetoric of Enthusiasm from the Ranters to Christopher Smart. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xii + 241pp. $54.95 Hudson, Benjamin T. Prophecy ofBerchán: Irish and Scottish High-Kings of the Early Middle Ages. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 288 pp. $59.95 Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Valperga: or, The Life and Adventures ofCastrucdo , Prince of Lucca. Jonathan Wordsworth, intro. 1823; New York: WoodstockBooks, 1996. 366 pp. $65.00 Simplify, Simplify and Other Quotations from Henry David Thoreau. Kevin P. Van Anglen, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. xxvi + 196 pp. $23.00 Smith, Charlotte. Letters of a Solitary Wanderer: Containing Narratives of Various Description. Jonathan Wordsworth, intro. 1800; New York: Woodstock Books, 1996. 381 pp. $65.00 Southcott, Joanna. A Dispute Between the Woman and the Powers of Darkness. Jonathan Wordsworth, intro. 1802; New York: Woodstock Books, 1996. 128 pp. $65.00 Sullivan, Robert. A Matter of Faith: The Fiction of Brian Moore. Westport: Greenwood, Press, 1996. 160 pp. $49.95 Whigham, Frank. Seizures of the Will in Early Modern English Drama. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xii + 299 pp. Cloth $54.95 Paper $19.95 Wu, Duncan. Wordsworth's Reading 1800-1815. New York: Cambridge...