Studio: international art (90.1925)

REVIEWS

SOME AUTUMN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

So great is the press of autumn books,
and so small the space in which to re-
view them, that we propose to address here
a brief resume to those wise readers who
appreciate finely produced and illustrated
literature at a moderate price. The Bodley
Head has issued Mr. James Branch Cabell's
Figures of Earth (215.) with plates by that
most original and imaginative humorist,
Frank C. Pape—Mr. Cabell's own deli-
cately allusive wit and piquant philosophy
are put forth with the ideal pictorial com-
plement. From the same publisher, and
illustrated by the same artist, comes
Anatole France's Penguin Island (16s.),
translated by A. W. Evans—one more of
this excellent series of translations, not to
be missed by the discerning. An edition
of The Picture of Dorian Gray, illustrated
by Henry Keen, and with an introduction
by Osbert Burdett (Lane, 165.), will
attract the numerous devotees of Wilde ;
and a translation of M. Andre Maurois'
Ariel, by Ella D'Arcy (Lane, 10s. 6c/.), so
flexible and idiomatic that one would
imagine it an original, will be a boon to
the still more numerous band who have
come under the spell of Shelley. The
method of writing an author's life in novel
form is one which might well be extended.
In unworthy hands it would doubtless
lead to abuses, but, practised by so sound
a scholar as M. Maurois, it gives a far
better picture than the average pedestrian
biography. There are eight colour-plates
by Jacquier, modern in feeling and cap-
turing the real Shelley, as his contem-
poraries describe him. Messrs. Chapman
and Hall publish at 155. an edition of
Everyman, and other Plays with colour
decorations by John Austen, who is
developing a very powerful original tech-
nique and freeing himself from the deriva-
tive tendencies which were formerly in
evidence. He is unquestionably in the
first rank of our decorative book-illustra-
tors. From the Oxford University Press
comes a selection of Border Ballads
(12s. 6c?.) with quaint woodcut headpieces
by Douglas Percy Bliss. Mr. Bliss includes
such ever-welcome favourites as " The
Wife of Usher's Well " and " Sir Patrick
Spens," while Dr. H. J. C. Grierson con-
tributes a foreword and there is a useful

396

glossary of Scottish words. The Kas:dah
of Sir Richard Burton, illustrated by John
Kettlewell (Philip Allan, 65.), provides the
first cheap edition of a poem not unworthy
to be placed near the Rubaiyat. Mr. D.
Croal Thomson's annual Barbizon House
Record (21s.) is, as usual, tastefully got up,
and is profusely illustrated with plates after
Brabazon, Brangwyn, Cameron, Clausen,
Constable, Corot, Daumier, Hals, Israels,
Millet, Morland, Raeburn, Rodin, Turner,
Whistler, and many others. We give one
of the Sargents on page 394. All these
are books which to see is to covet, and to
covet is to purchase. 0 a 0

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

From the Bodley Head we have received
a book in which are collected various
stories of children from the works of
Anatole France {Little Sea Dogs, and other
Tales of Childhood, 7s. 66?.). While not
specifically a book for children, it is calcu-
lated to charm those interested in children.
It is sympathetically illustrated by Marcia
Lane Foster, and translated by Alfred
Allinson and J. Lewis May. Two out-
standing children's books are Mr. A. A.
Milne's Gallery of Children, illustrated in
colour by H. Willebeek Le Mair (Stanley
Paul, 125. 66?.), and Mr, Harold Gaze's The
Merry Piper, illustrated, also in colour, by
the author (Longmans, Green, 7s. 66?.).
Mr. Milne is much the more u literary " of
the two—not that he uses hard words or
ever becomes too subtle, but his style has a
pleasing rhythm. The illustrations are
delightful, as are those of Mr. Gaze (some
of whose work we reproduced just a year
ago). Mr. E. V. Lucas, in Playtime and
Company (Methuen, 7s. 6c?.) commands a
variety of metres, rollicking and otherwise ;
and his irresistibly comic verselets are
accompanied by drawings no less droll by
Ernest H. Shepard. The work by Charles
Folkard and Dorothy Fitchew, in Nursery
Rhymes (Moring, 55.) (though lacking the
verve of line distinguishing the book above-
mentioned) has ideas, humour and clarity.
Miss Margaret Baker's Little Girl who
curtsied to the Owl (Werner Laurie, 3s. 6c?.)
is liberally besprinkled with silhouettes
which display a thorough acquaintance
with the attitudes of children and animals
and a delicate humour in their presentment.