Volume VI

_Later Dramas in Prose_

Schluck and Jau

And Pippa Dances

Charlemagne’s Hostage The Maidens of the Mount

Griselda

Gabriel Schilling’s Flight

Each Volume Crown 8vo. (7½ in. by 5 in.)

Price 5s. net.

Vie de Bohème:

A Patch of Romantic Paris

By ORLO WILLIAMS

T HE phrase “Vie de Bohème” is one in very frequent use, but few of its users recognize its implication. At the time when the term originated in French literature it had a very special meaning. That time was the Romantic period, one of the most brilliant in all the history of French artistic achievement, and the phrase denoted the life of an important section of Parisian Society between the years of 1830 and 1848. It was called into being by special circumstances and conditions in 1830; reached its golden age in 1835, and slowly declined till the revolution of 1848 reduced it to a mere excrescence on the life of art students, as it now is. “La Bohème” was strictly Parisian, as Henri Murger said it must be; it arose through the literary and social revolution of 1830; it flourished because of the universality of the Romantic spirit of which it was a flower; it declined because its second generation had neither the enthusiasm nor the talent of its first. Mr. Orlo Williams surveys the period very thoroughly, and his book is illustrated in colour and half-tone, from contemporary pictures and prints.

Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)

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The

Art of Silhouette

By DESMOND COKE

I N the popular belief a silhouette is something snipped from black paper on a pier for sixpence. Mr. Desmond Coke, as a fourteen-year collector of the fine eighteenth century profiles painted upon chalk, glass or paper, has set himself to correct this fallacy. The reproductions of miniature likenesses in silhouette by Miers, Charles, Rosenberg, Mrs. Beetham, and the other profilists who set Bath beaux and belles in black outline for ever, will probably surprise most readers by their delicate craftsmanship and life-like quality. The book is lightly planned: more an essay than a history or treatise. The joys of collecting—the charm of silhouette—the men who practised this short-lived art, including the tragi-comic Edouart, a man whom Dickens would have loved—the humours of their labels—the horrors of Victorian decadence—groups—some famous silhouette collections—fancy subjects cut in paper—Cupid and this set of shadows—a plea for austerity, addressed to modern artists—such are a few points covered by a book which (to quote the author’s foreword) is intended for “collectors, artists, lovers of the past, and all such as think nothing human or curious alien from themselves.”

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Personality in Literature

By R. A. SCOTT-JAMES

I N the third and longest part of this book, Mr. Scott-James estimates the work of some of the more prominent modern authors. But he presents these criticisms as the sequel to a general consideration of what it is that readers at all times look for in the best literature, and secondly, what are the special conditions of modern life that are having their effect upon men of letters.

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Walter Pater

A Critical Study

By EDWARD THOMAS

T HIS is a combined character study and criticism. The man’s life is used to elucidate his books, which in turn contribute many unquestionable touches of character. All his published books and scattered essays are considered from a practical and æsthetic standpoint. His fundamental ideas and tendencies, his purpose and effect, his style and his theory of style, are examined in a book for which there should be a distinct demand.

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Walt Whitman

A Critical Study

By BASIL DE SELINCOURT

M R. DE SELINCOURT’S object has been to show that, when all deductions have been made and elements of crudeness, reaction and extravagance fully allowed for, Whitman’s contribution to literature has the uniqueness and the solidity claimed for it by his admirers and by himself. The book differs from others in endeavouring more explicitly to exhibit the relation of Whitman’s form and style to those of conventional literature and to justify his apparent anomalies. Whitman’s peculiar use of language, his love of specification and cataloguing, etc., are explained in reference to the underlying purposes of language generally. His identification as a man with humanity, as an artist with America, are shown to have been genuine forces in him, available for expression and the real spring of his work.

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Dramatic Portraits

By P. P. HOWE

T HROUGHOUT this book a particular point of view has been adhered to, from which the drama is looked upon as a separate art from literature, and from which especial attention is paid to the manner of its practice. Thus nearly all the plays of the dramatists passed under review are to be studied in book form, but they are spoken of here, as far as possible, in terms of their actual presentation in the theatre. The dramatists include Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Bernard Shaw, Barrie, Granville Barker, Hankin, Galsworthy and Masefield. It is a book for all playgoers who have done their playgoing in the English theatre of the past twenty-five years. The portraits which illustrate it are from camera studies by Mr. E. O. Hoppé, reproduced by a new process which does full justice to his original prints.

Crown Octavo (7½ in. by 5 in.)

Illustrated. Price 5s. net.

Speculative Dialogues

By LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

T HESE dialogues are the work of a poet and critic who has rapidly achieved distinction, and although their primary purpose is to suggest a philosophic attitude towards modern metaphysical problems, they stand to be judged as literature as well as philosophy. Mr. Abercrombie’s attitude, one of individualism and Pyrrhonism, makes itself clear in the course of a series of dialogues between such personified abstractions as Famine and Pestilence, War and Murder, Science and the World; Philosophy and an Angel.

Wide Crown Octavo (7½ in. by 5 in.)

Price 5s. net.

New Fiction

I.

SINISTER STREET

By COMPTON MACKENZIE

Author of “Carnival,”

Now in its 35th Thousand.

II.

THE STORY OF LOUIE

By OLIVER ONIONS

Author of “The Debit Account.”

III.

HANDS UP!

By FREDERICK NIVEN

Author of “The Porcelain Lady.”

Martin Secker’s Series

of Modern Monographs

J. M. SYNGEBy P. P. Howe HENRIK IBSENBy R. Ellis Roberts WALTER PATERBy Edward Thomas THOMAS HARDYBy L. Abercrombie WALT WHITMAN By Basil de Selincourt GEORGE GISSINGBy Frank Swinnerton WILLIAM MORRISBy John Drinkwater A. C. SWINBURNEBy Edward Thomas

Each volume Demy Octavo, Cloth Gilt, with a

Frontispiece in Photogravure. Price 7s. 6d. net

_The Athenæum_ says: “We congratulate the publisher.”

_The Spectator_ says: “Mr. Secker’s excellent series of critical studies.”

_The Yorkshire Observer_ says: “Mr. Secker’s admirable series.”

_The Manchester Courier_ says: “This excellent series.”

_The Illustrated London News_ says: “Mr. Martin Secker’s series of critical studies does justice to the publisher’s sense of pleasant format. The volumes are a delight to eye and hand, and make a welcome addition to the bookshelf.”

MARTIN SECKER PUBLISHER

Number Five John Street Adelphi

AUTUMN

BOOKS

MCMXIII

MARTIN SECKER

NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET

ADELPHI LONDON

End of Project Gutenberg's Sinister Street, vol. 1, by Compton Mackenzie