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Book Reviews, Volume 32:1, 1988 essays are of uneven quality. Most discuss particular writers such as Allen Clarke, a Bolton journalist whose dialect novel about strikers, The Knobstick (1893), became popular, or schools of fiction like that of the radical feminists Clementina Black and Constance Howell who wrote sympathetically about exploitation by gender and class. Several of the essays are extremely narrow. What emerges overall from this book, however, is the rehabilitation of a fictional genre too often overlooked by scholars: popular sociahst writing at war with mainstream Victorian and Edwardian fiction. It may be an unnecessary act of cruelty to quote Klaus's statement in this review that "during the thirty-year run of the academic journal English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 only one or two forlorn articles have treated socialist narratives ." But his point is well taken, as is his convincing plea for a Library of Socialist Classics to parallel successful publishing ventures like Virago and the Feminist Press. Joel H. Wiener City College of New York _______________________________and CUNY Graduate Center__________ JOHN GRAY'S POEMS The Poems of John Gray. Ian Fletcher, ed. No. 1 in The 1880-1920 British Authors Series. Greensboro, NC: ELT Press, 1988. $28.50 Distributed in the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan by Colin Smythe Limited, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. John Gray holds a rather curious place in English literature, generally known only as a minor poet of the 1890s, a friend of Beardsley, Wilde, and other fin de siècle artists and writers, a convert to Catholicism , who took holy orders, completing his days as a secular priest and a Canon of St. Mary's Latin Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh. He is also recalled as a possible model for Wilde's Dorian Gray and for being the author of one of the most gorgeous and sought-after books of the 90s, Silverpoints. He is mentioned briefly in most accounts of the period as a personahty rather than as a poet, although a discerning few have shared Arthur Symons's admiration for his poetry. Frank Harris thought he had a "marked poetic gift" and Holbrook Jackson, the first chronicler of the period, considered him "a minor poet who will command a select group of admirers." Others termed him a "talented poet," and a writer of "distinctively interpretive verse," but generally his poetry has gone unread and for many years was practically ignored by anthologists. 86 Book Reviews, Volume 32:1, 1988 Part of this neglect can be attributed to the fact that most of Gray's books were published in lavish and extremely rare limited editions, usually found only in the special collections of large libraries or in private hands, hence not readily obtainable for extended study. The rehabilitation of Gray's literary reputation began in 1963 with the publication of a book of articles, Two Friends: John Gray and André Raffalovich, edited by Father Brocard Sewell, to which Professor Fletcher contributed "The Poetry of John Gray." He and Professor George A. Cevasco, author of the most recent study of Gray (in the Twayne English Authors Series), seem to be the only two scholars who have addressed the poetry with any degree of insight. The publication of The Poems of John Gray now makes available virtually all of his extant poetry originally printed in twelve volumes, plus many uncollected and previously unpublished poems. Fletcher acknowledges that possibly some poems may still be found in unlocated letters. He also includes "a poem that Gray did not recall having written in his lustrous youth" and in an appendix the text of two poems which have been attributed to Gray but which he believes (on the basis of "internal evidence") are by another. Omitted are translations of "the rhapsodic Hymns of Saint Gertrude" and verses from the works of Goethe and Nietzsche, "the latter of mild literary historical importance but of wan merit" according to the editor. Fletcher in his preface to the present volume, "John Gray: His Life, His Poetry," provides an excellent introduction to both, briefly summarizing the most important biographical facts and succinctly tracing the history of the poems and their relation to the poet's life. Editorial decisions regarding the particular...

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