Jerome K. Jerome: Update of a Bibliography of Writings About Him

JEROME K. JEROME: UPDATE OF A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WRITINGS ABOUT HIM By Carl Markgraf Portland State University The bibliographical entries and annotations are grouped under the appropriate works, listed alphabetically. [Also see "Jerome K. Jerome: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him," 26:1 (1983), 83-132.] I gratefully acknowledge the help of the following individuals, institutions, and their staffs in gathering these materials: Rüssel Wiebe, Graduate Research Assistant, PSU; Pamela Lieske, Teaching Assistant, PSU; Evelyn Crowell, Interlibrary Loan Librarian, and her staff, PSU; the British Library, Bloomsbury, and its Periodicals Division, Colindale; and PSU for the travel grant which made access to British holdings possible. In the latter regard I am especially grateful to Dean William Paudler, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, not only for his aid but even more for his encouragement in my bibliographical quests, of which this is one part. All Roads Lead to Calvary Boynton, H. W. "Troubles of Our Own," The Review, 1 (20 Dec 1919), 685-86. It is a post-W.W. I novel attempting to answer the question "What has happened to us, and how are we to rise from it, without love?" Though JKJ is older than the group of novelists we recognize as "Wellsian," and though he came into the Victorian world years before Wells and found it a far more congenial place, JKJ has gradually acquired the Wellsian or Georgian method. This method's chief trait is that it produces the narrative as a sort of informal talk issuing from the inner consciousness of the protagonist, who is theoretically not the author . All Roads Lead to Calvary, with the girl Joan as the recorder, is one continuous emission of impressions. The opening is purely Wellsian: the modern girl who has cut away from her stodgy, dissenting, provincial household and gained a foothold as a London journalist; she is Girton-equipped, beautiful, intelligent; she plans to reform this world, falls in love with a married man, plays suffragette, says farewell to love, and "carries on." Wells would have had her, almost carelessly, mating with her man, eloping or not, and ending quietly with no harm to man or wife. JKJ takes a more reactionary and sentimental view—like Dickens or Thackeray—is content to move his readers rather than make points for some theory. Schirmer, Walter F. " All Roads Lead to Calvary," Die Neuern Sprachen, 30 (1922), 295-97. More a discussion than a novel, the book contains all the mistakes therewith associated: lack of plot, plasticity, and uniformity. But 180 Markgraf: Jerome Update it is one of the most interesting documents of modern British intellectuality. Keynotes which JKJ hit in his pamphlet Common Sense as a member of UDC in the Foreign Affairs reoccur on many pages of the novel. The soothing Jeromesque resolution of the novel is that neither Germany nor France makes the wars—we, you and I, make them, for we love them. Anthony John Hill, E. B. [Anthony John], Literary Review of the New York Post, 19 May 1923, p. 699. "It is a far cry from 'Three Men in a Boat' to 'Anthony John,' and the author can hardly be said to be as interesting as a prophet as he was as an entertainer." "Jerome, J. K. Anthony John," Wisconsin Library Bulletin, 19 (June 1923), 160. [Brief summary.] "The first half of the book is the best." "Jerome's Social Novel," Springfield Republican, 13 July 1923, p. 12. Anthony John emphasizes the social ideal that, not through charity will the world be reformed, but through the service and sacrifice of everyone. This is accomplished through the characterization of Anthony John; but while this character study is interesting throughout the book, it is inconclusive because the story closes without giving any evidence that Anthony John's surrender of his wealth would accomplish anything more toward reforming the world than did his previous building of model dwellings for his workers. Osborn, E. W. [Anthony John], New York World, 6 May 1923, p. 8. "Mr. Jerome has written a good story, but we do not fall in with his logic or his propaganda ." Patterson, Isabel. "Varying Viewpoints in New English Novels," New York Tribune...