The Evening Missourian. [volume] (Columbia, Mo.) 1917-1920, 1918-03-11
THE NEW BOOKS
The Modern Library.

/ tney READ the readers OF Inc MOuefH
Library merit special distinction
| Certainly this series of volumes OF
challenging modernity is to be pos
sessed and read by all lovers of good
! books. The Modern Library is really
literary event of the first magnitude
The books are all bound in limp croft
leather. There is pleasant feel to
the hands; the press work is well
done, and the clear type is delight
| to the eye The size is convenient
and, marvel of marvels in this day
the price is inexpensive, sixty
cents a volume. Best of all
the selections are made with careful
taste, but with compelling appeal to
discriminating readers, who are more
numerous than book publishers have
been wont to admit. The subject mat
ter of The Modern Library could
scarcely be improved upon in excel
/ lence. interest, and variety. The pub
fishers are Boni and Liveright, 105
West 40th St, New York. They have
leaped at once into high nosition
among book publishers.
Among the authors represented in
earlier issues of The Modern Library
are: Oscar Wilde, Strindberg, Kipling,
Stevenson. Fl. G. Wells. Henrik Ibsen,
Anatole France, De Maupassant,
Nietzsche. Dostoyevsky, Maeterlinck.
SchOpenhauer. Samuel Butler, George
Meredith, c. B. Shaw. George Moore,
Thomas Hardy, Thomas Seltzer, Tur-
genev, Swinburne, VIM. Dean Howells,
w. S. Gilbert, Gustave Flaubert,
W. H. Wright, James Stephens, Anton
ChekhOv, Arthur Schintzler, Suder-
mann, Lord Dunsany. G. X. Chester
ton.
G. K Chesterton's The Man Who
Was Thursday" his famous night
mare, as he called it, is a delightful
addition to the library. The salient
gift that Chesterton puts into his
novels is his marvellous control over
the Amazing In a few hours the
whole world has become permeated
with the Anarchist idea, and we are
not half as astonished as Syme or the
Professor are in The Man Who Was
Thursday" Chesterton's characters
can juggle with the stars and planets
and moons without evolving any dis
belief in our minds of their actual
existence To be Chestertonian, they
are too impossible, these characters,
not to be real: they have too many
divine flashes of wit not to be human:
they have too much of Chesterton
within them not to be large and de-
lightful.
H. G.. Wells Ann Veronica" was
written when Wells was an unqualified
radical. The heroine is vividly drawn
and thoroughly a feminist, lovable as
woman too. Ann Veronica" is an
out and out love story with its heroine
a new woman, fighting for equal rights
of the sexes. decidedly unusual. but
delightful combination.
MARY, Mary" is one of the most
charming of the stories by James
Stephens, a most charming Irishman.
The scene is laid in Dublin, pictured
with its promenades and side streets,
its friendliness, its big policemen, and
its poor, who are rich in imagination.
There is humor and wit and an ex-
travagance of imagination in Mary,
Mary" and something else which is
nj
democracy and a sense of the spirit
ual equality of all men and women.
The Belgian Shakespeare, as a
French writer called Maurice Maeter-
linck, is represented in The Modern
Library by "A Miracle of st. Anthony"
The play is fine satire never before
published in English. Maeterlinck is
a mystic, whom we all enjoy because
we find no great difficulty in under
standing what he is driving at. His
characters are indistinct beings,
shadowy figures, moving on the stage
that is not of this world, and the ac-
ton is that of souls rather than men
and women of flesh and blood. But
Maeterlinck succeeds always by means
of simple unpretentious language in
making his meaning clear, in revealing
the spiritual beauty of common human
existence.
"The Red Lily" is one of the finest
examples of the art of Anatole France.
France is a Frenchman to the core,
elegant, charmingly cynical, a man
of the world, yet humane and sympa-
thetic. Without illusions, with no
exaggerated hopes for humanity he
yet looks with kindly eyes at the
hustle that the man creatures make
on this earth. 81 prefer the folly Of
passion to the wisdom of indifference"
is Frances philosophy which makes
1t possible for him to enter into the
emotional life of men and women and
create great novels.
Arthur Schnitzler is perfect
viennese as Anatole France is per-
feet Partisan. Like the Frenchman
he is an intellectual aristocrat, gay,
cynical, graceful. with exquisite art
and fiawless taste He is at his best
in his plays. In The Modern Library
appears "Anatole and Other Plays"