The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-04-09
LIFE AND GABRlELLA.

LIFE AND GABR1ELLA." By Ellen Glasgow. Frontispiece by Allan
 Gilbert. Doubleday, Page & Co.,, pub
 fishers, Garden City, N. Y.
 Today Ellen Glasgow stands at the head of the list with a few others, who have made literature what it is in it's best and highest sense-something worth while-modern literature-the kind that does not suffer by comparison with the classics.
 Tn her Virginia written now three years or more, Miss Glasgow reached high water mark and proclaimed her talent to the world as trenchant, gripping, vital.
 In Life and Gabriella" her last novel, she again manfests the fact very plale- ly that she is a genius-that she knows how to write and what to write and she has given the best of herself in this book.
 Life and Gabriela" is a worthy sue cessor to Virginia" and bids far to be one of the most widely read novels of the year.
 The heroine, Gabriella Mary Carr, was even IS a child the sort you could count on" Her mother--a weak perspl of eX- cellent ancestry" who had been left penniless widow when Gabrlella was Ht- tie more than 8 baby. and her elder sls- ter Jane, still a child-was constitution ally gentle timid dependent and futile, while Jane, who had married "a reform ing rake" and spent 10 years trying, ostrich-ike to conceal the unhapplness of which every one was perfectly well aware was a person Of the plalnllVe, santly. nagging sort with hdtufli tendency to clingins sweetness who would
 a1y drink. When the book opens Jane has inst Jeff her husband for the third time in F months and is in state Of ansenc collapse very trying to the lndlshanl and energetic Gabriella who declares: Eut one can always do something IL It only to scream "a speech Wnlch sFes very good indication of her character Ii is courage which is Gabriella's most pronounced trait: her te tiefcy is always to resist misfortune, uot supinely to re- sign herself to it: to do something herself not to sit with folded hands waiting for someone to do something TOT her And this courage of hers is lndom- itable Of course there are moments hours even, when it seems to fall her. for her life is by means an easy one, and she has difficulties and disappo1nt- ments to meet that might well nave daunted a woman less strong of heart ana soul But Gabriella fights her battles with magnificent bravery; she wanted knowledge now, not faith; truth. not lllu- sion" and she firmly believed: II have a right to be happy, but it depends on myself"
 The development of this character is the theme of Miss Glasgow's nove-its growth and testing and discipline. When we leave Gabriella she is a woman 3S wears old. who has left behind her the illusions and traditions and conventions that were her heritage, whose will to grow to serve and to conqIer' has risen supreme and vanqlished ''the empty rule of the past She is young, too, able to adventure and to enjoy, realizing that the true middle age is not a period of years but condition of soul.
 PIERRE YIN. TON"
 By Edward c. Venable. The John Lane
 Company, Publisher, New York.
 There is a mystery about Pierre Vim tom The question is, after all who really wrote it? Its publishers protest that they have supposed all along that the novel was the work of one Edward C Venable. a recent Princeton grad uate, prominent among journalists, but new to the field of fiction. They have never even imagined-much less con- nved at-the slightest deception AS matter of fact they believe in MT Ven ables existence. Indeed, they have seen him, talked with him in a pretty tangible sort of way and-we suspect-shaken hands with him. There was nothing at all astral or uncanny about his appear ance at their offices. So that much they know.
 But now comes the question, who is the Bacon in the background-the great fiction writer who has thus scurrilously made use of the Venable name? It is one of four, we are told. We have this from one of the best of American book reviewers. These four the only writers who could have conceived Pierre Vinton' Who they are, the reviewer does not state. One of them (and the reviewer is pretty sure which, decided to have some innocent fun with the Ameri-