Gosse's Portraits

ELT : VOLUME 35:2 1992 readers' sensibilities. But he draws some interesting comparisons between The Valley of Fear (1915) and Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929) (with their use of American "gangs") and leaves us with much food for thought in his consideration of The Sign of the Four as a work outside of the series, an example of the detective novel used to explore ideas of the day. In his discussion of authors who worked within the period represented by ELT, the author considers Israel Zangwill's The Big Bow Mystery (1891) as a parody of the form and a novel of ideas, Arthur Morrison's The Dorrington Deed-Box (1897) with its criminal-as-hero theme, and the way E. C. Bentley^ Trent's Last Case (1913) undermines the genre and explodes the myth of the infallible sleuth. He argues that G. K. Chesterton in the Father Brown stories virtually deconstructs the whole idea of detection while expressing theological concerns and attacking inequalities of class and wealth. Priestman continues the search for his link between detective fiction and literature in his discussion of Henry James's short story "The Figure in the Carpet," Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," and Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.," exploring their detective fiction parallels while asserting the subjective consciousness in the stories and their correct use of metaphors and symbols which have no single meaning. His sub-title "The Figure on the Carpet" is used to suggest the contrast with the high literature of James ("The Figure in the Carpet") and that which is represented by a chalk drawing to indicate where the body lay once the police have finished, as well as the reader on the carpet about to have that carpet pulled out from under him at the denouement of the puzzle. In the final third of the book, Priestman discusses the characteristics of the golden age of detective fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, with the way the conventions have been extended to modern authors like P. D. James, and concludes with an all-too-brief look at American and British hard-boiled fiction. He ends with a hope of having found a perspective for a half-polarity/ half-collaboration between the two worlds of literature . He has succeeded, not in ending the argument, but in providing some grounds on which to continue the discussion in a serious manner. J. Randolph Cox ______________________ St. Olaf College Gosse's Portraits Portraits from Life by Edmund Gosse. Anne Thwaite, ed. Aldershot, England: Scolar Press; Brookfield, VT: Gower Publishing, 1991. 171 pp. $39.95 242 BOOK REVIEWS ANNE THWAITE is certainly the proper person to collect such an impressive array of essays from Edmund Gosse's voluminous writings, portraits from the lives of writers whom he knew well that depict him at his best as an essayist. Her exhaustive biography, Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape, 1849-1928 (1984), well qualifies her to make such a distinguished collection. Knowing Gosse's ambition to contribute to the "biographical record" of his time, Thwaite states her aim this way: "It is the intention of this book to revive and make easily accessible a number of Gosse's studies from life." Robert Louis Stevenson once said to Gosse: " 'See as many people as you can and make a book of them before you die. That will be a living book, upon my word'." As Thwaite remarks, "This book of mine is an attempt to make from this scattered material [essays in several books by Gosse] the sort of living book Stevenson was suggesting and which Gosse never made himself." Thwaite's organization of her book is indeed excellent: an illuminating introduction; twelve of Gosse's essay portraits, with headnotes by the editor; very informative and elaborate notes; and an index to names and titles. Even the attractive jacket cover, with photographic portraits of four of Gosse's subjects, is impressive regarding the Pre-Raphaelite and fin de siècle eras: Christina Rossetti, from a "colored chalk portrait"; Henry James, with his mysterious gaze; Coventry Patmore, authority on love; and Algernon Swinburne, with his perennially youthful look— all taken from portraits by distinguished artists. Gosse...