Editorial Ricochets

76 EDITORIAL RICOCHETS [Notes I place the following remarks under the Editorial Ricochets caption rather than among "book reviews because I regard these remarks as part of a calculated campaign to support publishers - small or large - who seem to he providing scholars and teachers of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English literature with particularly useful publication projects and services. - HEG.] The Makers of the Nineties The Makers of the Nineties, initiated by Dr. G. Krishnamurti, Secretary of the Eighteen Nineties Society, is one of the most useful series of monographs to appear in a long time. Since it is already becoming difficult to gather source material on the lives and works of many writers and illustrators of the late nineteenth century, Krishnamurti's monograph project is particularly timely. Dr. Krishnamurti's plans for the series are ambitious. With the inclusion not only of useful and often scarce biographical information, brief critical introductions, unpublished work, checklists, and bibliographies, the series will be essential for reassessments of writers and movements in the period from 1880 to I920. One hopes that the general editor of the series will eventually find it possible to include some reprints of scarce primary works. The monograph series emphasizes relatively minor writers, and this fact, I suppose, still needs a word of defense. Most obviously, information about many of these writers is hard to come by and their writings are not readily available. That alone should be reason enough to include them in the series. Perhaps more important is the fact that many of these writers were crucially involved in the lives of more famous relatives, friends, and acquaintances and contributed significantly to some of the major literary movements of the 1890s. In most instances their importance is not due to their individual productions, although all of them produced some quite good work. Their importance lies rather in what, taken together, they contributed to an exciting, complex, and influential period in English literature . These minor writers often reveal more plainly than those of whom academia has made monuments the essential characteristics of the period. They contributed to the massive re-examination of literary traditions and to the experiments with content and technique that fundamentally influenced the work of T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, and many others associated with what is still vaguely called "modernism." To date three titles have appeared in the Makers series! Father Brocard Sewell's Olive Custance (1975), Margaret Maison's John Oliver Hobbes (I976) , and John Adlard's Owen Seaman (1977)· Announced as forthcoming are Richard Whittington-Egan's Stephen 77 Phillips, Ian Fletcher's Herbert P. Home, and Karl Beckêon's Henry Harland. Father Brocard's monograph, a lecture given before the Eighteen Nineties Society (formerly the Francis Thompson Society) on 6 December 197^-, is the slightest (37pp) title so far, the succeeding ones having become progressively longer (78pp and 139pp). The first three titles appeared in editions limited to 500, 500, and 750 copies each, respectively. Prices for the paperbound editions vary according to length; a very small hardbound deluxe edition is also occasionally produced. Father Brocard's-Olive Custance is a sympathetic biographical introduction to Lady Douglas' life and work; it is, in fact, the first biographical study devoted solely to her and it thus conveniently brings together in one extended essay such information as is scattered about in various sources. Though Father Brocard eschews much critical comment and candidly admits that his "opportunities for research have been limited," he prints sixteen poems by Olive Custance which, he says, "shall speak for themselves." One wishes, in view of the fine work Father Brocard has done on John Gray, that he had included more commentary on the poems, that he had been able to consult the early diaries in the Berg Collection, and that he had looked into the published work on Olive Custance which has been compiled in Nancy J. Hawkey's annotated secondary bibliography (ELT, XV ¡ 1 [1972], 4-9-51. 52-56). Still, Father Brocard has assembled some useful biographical information and provided some valuable insights into Olive Custance's personality. I am entirely in accord with Ian Fletcher's...