Briefer Mention

BRIEFEK MENTION George Gissing. Demos: A Story of English Socialism. Ed. and Intro, by Pierre Coustillas. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982. $10.95 The Nether World: A Novel. Ed. and Intro, by John Goode. Harvester, 1982. $7.95 Harvaster Press is to be commended for these additions to the Society & The Victorians series. Coustillas and Goode offer incisive introductions to these works of Gissing. Kiely, Robert, ed. Modernism Reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press (Harvard English Studies 11), 1983. Cloth $25.00 Paper $8.95 Contributors were asked "to reconsidered authors who, for one reason or another, have been excluded by critics from the great modern constellation ... to examine works by major writers that are not usually regarded as among their most typical or greetest achievements." ELT readers will find several articles interesting: "Towards Early-Modern Autobiography: The Roles of Oscar Wilde, George Moore, Edmund Gosse, and Henry Adams" (Jerome H. Buckley); "The Art of Arnold Bennett: Transmutation and Empathy in Anna of the Five Towns and Riceyman Steps" (Donald D. Stone); "The Great War and Sassoon's Memory" (Thomes Mellon). Moser, Thomes C. The Life in the Fiction of Ford Madox Ford. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981. $30.00 Regretably ELT failed to have this Important book reviewed. In his dealings with Ford's life and works, Moser's "ultimate subject remains Ford's creative imagination with its charecteristic tendency to shift about, in similar but ever-changing patterns, a group of familiar fictive counters closely connected to a few human beings." Moser admits the book is neither pure criticism nor biogrephy—that it is "highly speculative": "It uses fiction to explain life, life to explain fiction, thus constently violating the critical dogma of our time." Moser contends , however, that it seems "the only way to begin to understand a figure as strange, loveable, brilliant, unhappy, jocund, generous, and altogether wonderful" as Ford. Nadel, Ira B., end William E. Fredeman, eds. Victorisn Novelists After 1885, Vol. 18. Detroit, MI: GeIe Research, 1983. $76.00 This handsome and useful volume in the Dictionary of Literary Biography series presents biographical-critical articles on thirty-three novelists , many of whom should be of interest to ELT readers. Each article includes biographicsl commentary and critical discussion of major works. Butler, Doyle, Gissing, Hardy, Moore, Rutherford, Schreiner, and Stevenson are but a few of the figures considered. The articles are written by well-respected specialists, such as Jacob Korg, Norman Page, Susan Dick, and others. ________. Victorian Novelists Before 1885, Vol. 21. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1983. $76.00 This volume contains bio-critical articles on a host of Victorian figures . 178 179 Scott-Kilvert, Ian, Gen. ed. British Writers, Vol. 6. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983. $60.00 Published originally by the British Council as a series of individual works, the articles here have been revised and updated with new bibliographical information. Vol. 6 contains articles on the following ELT figures: Hardy (C. Day Lewis and R. A. Scott-James); Moore (A. Norman Jeffares); Shaw (Margery M. Morgan); Conrad (C. B. Cox); Housman (Ian Scott-Kilvert); Kipling (A. G. Sandison); Yeats (G. S. Fraser); Wells (Kenneth Young); Synge and Lady Gregory (Elizebeth Coxheed); Ford (Kenneth Young); G. K. Chesterton (Christopher Hollis); Maugham (Anthony Curtis); Forster (Philip Gardner); Poets of World War I (John Press); Owen (Dominic Hibberd). Secor, Robert and Marie. The Return of the Good Soldier: Ford Madox Ford end Violet Hunt's 1917 Diary. Univ. of Victoria: No. 30 English Literery Monogreph Series, 1983. $5.00 Preceding Hunt's diary (24 Feb 1917 to 24 Jan 1918) is a lengthy introduction divided into three sections: The Diary, The Context, The Larger Context. According to the Secors, reading Hunt's 1917 diary is "like re-entering the Parede's End novels from the point of view of Sylvie Tietjens." Service, Alesteir. Edwerdien Interiors. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1982. £15.95 Service brings together 134 photographs/illustrations that aid in describing the residential architecture, from working-class houses to the homes of royalty. Tomalin, Ruth. W. H. Hudson: A Biography. London: Faber end Feber, 1983. $24.95 Morley Roberts wss Hudson's first biogrspher. Tomalin now offers another look at the life and...