Bibliography, News, and Notes

39. BIBLIOGRAPHY, NEWS, AND NOTES By Helmut E. Gerber No worthwhile discussions of the following authors have come to my attention: J.D. Beresford, G. Cannan, H, Crackanthorpe, R.B. Cunninghame-Graham, W. De Morgan, W.L. George, M. Hewlett, S. Kaye-Smith, R. Macaulay, W. McFee, W.B. Maxwell, L. Merrick, CE. Montague, A. Morrison, H.H. Munro, 0. Onions, E. Pugh, F. Swinnerton, H. Walpole, R. Whiteing, F.B. Young, I. Zangwill. Checklists of significant older articles on these writers are in preparation. In future issues other writers who come within the scope of EFT will be added. For most of the above writers as well as those who are listed in the following pages, see the previous issues of EFT, especially Volume I, Number 1 (1958). ARNOLD BENNETT The MS notes for RICEYMAN STEPS on 37 pages of a notebook, titled and signed on the end-paper by the author, were reported as sold in G.F. Sims* Catalogue (Autumn, 1958), Six A,L.S, and a.c.s. to Richmond Temple (1918/28) were also reported sold by Sims, One of these letters presents the notebook for RICEYMAN to Temple. I have been informed that New York Public Library bought the notebook . Washington University (St, Louis) has an A.L.S. from Bennett to Alfred Reeve, dated Sept. 7, 1915; apparently giving some business advice /see WASH. UNIV. LIBRARY STUDIES. No» 4, 195.87 Prof. Harris Wilson's edition of Bennett's letters to H.G. Wells is said to be in the hands of Rupert Hart-Davis, and James Hall's ARNOLD BENNETT: PRLMITIVISM AND TASTE (Seattle: U. of Wash. Press, 1959), although apparently delayed, should be available shortly. Bergonzi, Bernard, "The Novelist as Hero," THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, CLXVI (Nov, 1958), 444-55, Compares Gissing's NEW GRUB STREET with B's A MAN FROM THE NORTH, (See under Gissing.) WALTER BESANT Most of Besant!s books are out of print, and very little of any consequence has been written about him. For his life, the AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1901) is, in effect, the only work of any value. Most histories of the novel do little more than mention him in passing, Vihen he is praised, it is for his historical novels set in the eighteenth century and for his studies of London life. More often he is damned for being superficial or for pandering to the average taste. Between Lewis Melville i s fumbling chapter on Besant in 1906 and Fred W. Boege's long, thorough, and, on the whole, very just article in 1956, there is nothing of any importance except, perhaps, Vollenweider's dissertation (1927). CBEL, in Volume III, mentions only Melville's book, and, in the Supplement (Vol. V), give s nothing at all on Besant, T,E,M, Boll, whose article on Besant appears earlier in these pages, has suggested many of the following relatively slight items on Besant as a sample of the kind of attention Besant has received. Baker, Ernest. THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL. Vol. IX. Lond: Witherby, 1938- 40. Boege, Fred W. "Sir Walter Besant: Novelist," NINETEENTH CENTURY FICTION, X (March 1956), 249-80; XI (June 1956), 32-60. This full, detailed study considers the Besant-Rice collaboration and Besant as "The Man of Causes." Boege also studies Besant's reputation with the public and among fellow writers, and he comments at length on the many literary controversies in which Besant played a prominent role. Cazomian, Madeleine L. LE ROMAN ET LES IDÉES EN ANGLETERRE. 2 vols. L'INFLUENCE DE LA SCIENCE (i): 1860-1890. Strasbourg: Librairie Istra, 1923; Oxford U.P., 1923, pp. 2, 5, 12, 53, 64, 67, 387, 379. Cazamian writes of B. as a disciple of Dickens, that he has intellectual pretensions , that he has a penchant for the sensational. Calisch, Edward. THE JEW IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, AS AUTHOR AND AS SUBJECT. Richmond, Va: The Bell Book and Stationery Co., 1909. Praises THE REBEL QUEEN. Hamilton, Clayton. A MANUAL OF THE aRT OF FICTION. NY: Doubleday, Page, 1918; revd. ed., 1920, pp. xxiv, 37· Derides B's "never to go beyond your own experience," without trying to understand the context. James, Henry...