Volume 2 is in two parts: Songs of childhood: 1901, and Peacock pie.

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Reviewed by J. M. Murray

+ =Ath= p466 O 8 ’20 750w

“Enough has been said to show Mr de la Mare’s attitude towards poetry and towards life. The question now arises whether this attitude is not somewhat too severely limited to make of him anything more than a delicate craftsman, a painter of miniatures, a carver of cherry-stones.” J: G. Fletcher

+ − =Freeman= 2:477 Ja 26 ’21 900w

“His artistic presence in our modern world is so surprising that we are tempted to doubt the certainty of it when his books are not in our hands. He is a delightful anachronism. Out of our tangle of violent and discordant colors he makes his white magic. Of Mr de la Mare’s poems for children it is difficult to speak moderately.” Marguerite Wilkinson

+ =N Y Times= p16 D 19 ’20 1550w

“The poems are like silk threads which are individually fragile, but which, woven together, make a fabric of unmatched fineness and strength, and are capable of taking on the softest, clearest colours. Some of the poems for children are exceedingly successful.”

+ =Spec= 125:571 O 30 ’20 500w

“Few of our poets have availed themselves of their privilege of prosodic freedom more delicately than Mr de la Mare. He has a musician’s ear; his rhythms have the clear articulation and unpredictable life-lines of the phrases in a musical theme. The course of his verse reminds us frequently of the fall of a feather launched upon still air and fluttering earthwards, tremulously in dips and eddies.”

+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p657 O 14 ’20 3300w

=DE LA MARE, WALTER JOHN.= Rupert Brooke and the intellectual imagination. pa 75c Harcourt

20–1238

“It is the brilliant quality of Rupert Brooke’s passionate interest in life, his restless, exploring, examining intellect, that chiefly concerns Walter de la Mare in a lecture on Brooke first given before Rugby school a year ago, and now issued in booklet form. He suggests that poets are of two kinds: those who are similar to children in dreamy self-communion and absorption; and those who are similar to boys in their curious, restless, analytical interest in the world. Poets of the boyish or matter-of-fact imagination are intellectual, he says: they enjoy experience for itself. Poets of the childish or matter-of-fancy heart are visionary, mystical; they feed on dreams and enjoy experience as a symbol. He thinks that Brooke’s imagination was distinctly of the boyish kind.”—Bookm

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=Booklist= 17:60 N ’20

“Those many who admire the peculiar mysticism and subtlety of Mr de la Mare’s reaction to the terms of experience will not be surprised that this essay of his seems the most valuable comment that has been made on the poet of the ‘flaming brains,’ the most romantic and appealing figure of youth and song that has crossed the horizon of these riddled years.” Christopher Morley

+ =Bookm= 51:234 Ap ’20 650w

“An interesting and valuable contribution to poetic interpretation. It is a beautifully written piece of prose woven with subtle analysis and keen perceptions, the kind of spoken meditation which takes one back to the days of Pater and Symonds.” W. S. B.

+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Mr 31 ’20 650w

+ =Cleveland= p73 Ag ’20 80w

“Mr de la Mare does him a service by silencing the hysterical plaudits, and presenting with cool and exquisite certainty the more enduring aspects of Brooke’s spirit. Of this little book both Mr de la Mare and Brooke may well be proud.”

+ =Sat R= 129:62 Ja 17 ’20 260w

+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p739 D 11 ’19 1350w

=DELAND, MARGARET WADE (CAMPBELL) (MRS LORIN FULLER DELAND).= Old Chester secret. il *$1.50 (6c) Harper

20–18606

When Miss Lydia Sampson promises to take Mary Smith’s child and keep the truth about his birth secret, she means to keep her word and does so in the face of Old Chester gossip. Later the proud grandfather, whose heart has been won by the boy, wants to adopt him but meek little Miss Lydia agrees only on the ground that he acknowledge the relationship. Still later when the weak parents also wish to go thru the formality of adoption she makes the same condition. When the mother is finally moved to make her confession the son casts her off as once she had cast him, but Dr Lavendar intervenes in her behalf, telling the boy that her soul has just been born.

* * * * *

“An exquisite bit of character work.”

+ =Booklist= 17:115 D ’20

Reviewed by H. W. Boynton

+ =Bookm= 52:253 N ’20 70w

“With what truth and delicate artistry Mrs Deland handles the narrative of what happened to Johnny, his foster mother, and his parents, no one who is at all familiar with the other Old Chester tales will need to be told. Simple as is its plot, the story has the quality of suspense, never permitting the reader’s interest to flag.”

+ =N Y Times= p19 N 14 ’20 550w

“The story is not entirely convincing, but the reader remains under the spell of the writer’s dramatic skill.”

+ − =Springf’d Republican= p7a D 12 ’20 800w

“It lacks the vitality of the earlier Old Chester stories and suggests that this vein is wearing thin.”

+ − =Wis Lib Bul= 16:237 D ’20 80w

=DE LA PASTURE, EDMÉE ELIZABETH MONICA (E. M. DELAFIELD, pseud.).= Tension. *$2.25 (3c) Macmillan

20–17523

The story revolves about the faculty and directors of a provincial commercial college. Lady Rossiter, wife of one of the directors, is an officious person who dispenses sweetness and light in theory and in practice spreads malicious gossip. An incident in the early life of Pauline Marchrose, who come to the college as superintendent, is so magnified that the girl is forced to resign her position. She has been greatly attracted to Mark Easter, a man of charming personality without force of character, and her leaving the college has all the elements of defeat with a shattered ideal added, but an unexpected turn is given to the story by Fairfax Fuller, principal of the college, and in Lady Rossiter’s opinion, a misogynist.

* * * * *

“A convincing personality but not a satisfying plot.”

+ − =Booklist= 17:115 D ’20

“The interplay between two temperaments is one of the most searching things in recent fiction. But, indeed, Miss Delafield is very rich in creative vigor.”

+ =Nation= 111:568 N 17 ’20 410w

“The end is abrupt, and may be unsatisfactory to those who read ‘Tension’ for any other reason than to watch Miss Delafield pillory objectionable characters. This she does most competently to Lady Rossiter, to a simpering young authoress, and to two dreadful children, but the nice people, it must be admitted, leave very little impression.” S. T.

+ − =New Repub= 24:246 N 3 ’20 540w

“‘Tension’ has got scarcely anything to recommend it. The story may be life, but it is altogether too drab and uninteresting for fiction.”

− =N Y Evening Post= p22 O 23 ’20 140w

+ =Outlook= 126:600 D 1 ’20 60w

“Miss Delafield presents her characters through their own words, and their speech is sustained self-revelation. Almost all of them are eccentric, and their eccentricities are expressed with something of Dickens’s inventiveness and humorous exaggeration. We have to smile or laugh whenever they open their mouths.”

+ − =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p401 Je 24 ’20 660w

=DELL, ETHEL MAY.= Tidal wave, and other stories. *$1.75 (2c) Putnam

19–5814

The first of this collection of short stories tells of the love of a big red-headed young giant of a fisherman for a lovely vision of a girl whose awakening to womanhood came to her in an overpowering passion for an artist. The latter’s love was for his art to which he would have unscrupulously sacrificed the girl. A catastrophe which would have cost them both their lives but for the timely intervention of the red giant, taught the girl through much sorrow the difference between the love that stands like a rock and the passion that sweeps by like a tidal wave. The stories of the collection are: The tidal wave; The magic circle; The looker-on; The second fiddle; The woman of his dream; The return game.

* * * * *

“Six tales with well drawn characters which rather compensate for the melodramatic features of the book.”

+ − =Booklist= 16:312 Je ’20

“Of the six short stories contained in this volume, ‘The looker-on’ is perhaps the least stereotyped.”

+ − =N Y Times= 25:4 Mr 7 ’20 300w

Reviewed by Christine McAllister

=Pub W= 97:604 F 21 ’20 300w

=DELL, ETHEL MAY.= Top of the world. *$2 (1½c) Putnam

20–13065

Sylvia Ingleton is a very miserable girl when her father brings home a stepmother, who proves so domineering and hard that Sylvia realizes her happiness is ruined unless she gets away. So she goes out to her fiancé in South Africa, a fiancé whom she has known only by correspondence for the last five years. Upon her arrival there, Guy fails her, but his cousin Burke steps into his place, and when Sylvia realizes she cannot count on Guy, she consents to marry Burke. The remainder of the story is taken up with the struggle between her old dying love for Guy, and the new love which springs up in her heart for Burke, which at first she fights against and denies. In the end it conquers her, however, but not before she and Guy and Burke have gone through many bitter waters.

* * * * *

“The amazing thing about the Dell fiction is that it is so good of its kind. There is almost no sensual appeal in it, and very little of anything that is revolting. As full of sob stuff as Florence Barclay’s immortal works, it has still a virile fibre. The South African descriptions are excellent. Much of the subsidiary character work is distinctly good.”

+ =Boston Transcript= p7 N 24 ’20 390w

“That’s the kind of a story it is—lingering madness long drawn out—562 pages of mawkishness.”

− =N Y Times= p28 Ja 2 ’21 470w

“Almost alone in a tired world, Miss Dell continues to sound the clarion note of melodrama. Taken by themselves Miss Dell’s heroes are rather tedious.”

− =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p385 Je 17 ’20 140w

=DELL, FLOYD.= Moon-calf. *$2.25 Knopf

20–19503

A biographical novel relating the childhood, adolescence and young manhood of Felix Fay. He was the youngest of a somewhat misfit family—his father’s early turbulence ending in failure and his brothers’ artistic proclivities in resigned adaptations to the necessities of life. Only in the dreamer Felix, because life was so unreal to him and his dreams so real, was there enough persistence to make some of the dreams materialize—after a fashion. The reader accompanies him through school life with its unquenchable thirst for reading, his religious development, his loneliness and poetic aspirations, his economic struggles and his acquaintance with socialism, his adolescent longings with their culmination in a love episode and his early career as a journalist.

* * * * *

“A subtle character study accomplished by narrated episodes rather than detailed analyses. Some readers will object to this on moral grounds. Probably not for the small library.”

+ =Booklist= 17:157 Ja ’21

Reviewed by R. C. Benchley

+ =Bookm= 52:559 F ’21 380w

“We realize how very close Floyd Dell has got to the heart and ideals of America in this portrayal of the family glorifying of Felix’s education.” D. L. M.

+ =Boston Transcript= p11 D 1 ’20 1000w

“‘Moon-calf,’ as it stands, has the importance of showing how serious and how well-composed an American novel can be without losing caste. It is an effective compromise, in manner between the school of observation and the school of technique.” E. P.

+ =Dial= 70:106 Ja ’21 90w

“Mr Dell’s first novel, in short, shows us that a well-equipped intelligence and a new perception have been brought to bear on the particular instance of the sensitive soul, the particular instance that lies at the heart of all our questioning, and that the endless circle of sensitive souls and terrifying American towns is broken at last.” Lucian Cary

+ =Freeman= 2:403 Ja 5 ’21 500w

“Any lover of fine fiction must rejoice in the surfaces of Floyd Dell’s first novel much as a cabinet-maker does when he rubs his fingers along a planed board or an old gardener when he turns a cool, firm, ruddy apple over and over in his hand. The style of ‘Moon-calf’ will arouse despair in the discerning. Colloquial and flexible, it is also dignified as only a natural simplicity can make it.” C. V. D.

+ =Nation= 111:sup670 D 8 ’20 580w

“One must have a good deal of fluid romanticism to be able to revel in Felix Fay. In his struggle toward reality there is a good deal of vivid and sympathetic narrative, and one feels that his plight as an imaginative youth is honestly understood. But is it generous or engaging imagination? And is it associated with intelligence? The subsequent development of Felix Fay may say yes, but so far he is mainly an exactingly hungry and under-fed literary ego.” F. H.

+ − =New Repub= 25:49 D 8 ’20 1250w

“His words develop a dull and unpenetrative edge while his form is not at all illuminative. One is lost in a meandering of incident which has been given no significance by any concerted impulse, any synthetic grasp of the subject, any consistent overtone or generality.” Kenneth Burke

− + =N Y Evening Post= p3 D 31 ’20 1150w

“So skillfully has the author drawn his poignant portrait of a sensitive idealist in conflict with a hostile, workaday world that the reader will soon cease to think of Felix as a character in a novel. Rather, he will think that he is the novelist himself dressed in the incognito of a few imaginary experiences.”

+ =N Y Times= p20 D 12 ’20 1100w

“It is written by a man who thinks for readers who think. It is addressed to those persons who want to know what makes us what we are.” M. A. Hopkins

+ =Pub W= 98:1885 D 18 ’20 300w

“A story told with ease and restraint. There is no animated showman in the foreground to divert us with his witticisms. The action, quiet and leisurely though it is, steadily unfolds itself by means of certain persons who are and mean something to us, without our effort.” H. W. Boynton

+ − =Review= 3:623 D 22 ’20 280w

=DELL, ROBERT EDWARD.= My second country (France). *$2 Lane 914.4

20–8528

The author’s qualifications for talking about France and the French people rest on the facts that France has been the home of his choice for over twelve years, that he has lived intimately with the people in their own homes, and that his friends are of various classes and opinions, including the proletariat and the rural folk, and that the more he saw of them the more he loved them. The object of the book is to draw attention to certain defects in French institutions and methods, to show that the political situation gives signs of nearing the end of a régime and is full of glaring fundamental inconsistencies; and that in other than political respects, also, France is behind the times and in need of drastic changes. Contents: The French character; Problems of reconstruction; The administrative and political systems; The discredit of parliament and its causes; Results of the revolution; Small property and its results; Socialism, syndicalism and state capitalism; Back to Voltaire; Index.

* * * * *

“When we leave actual people, and come to institutions, the political system, banking, railways, religion, etc., Mr Dell displays all the peculiar excellences of his type. His analysis is acute, modern and thoroughly interesting.” J, W. N. S.

+ − =Ath= p178 F 6 ’20 1050w

=Booklist= 17:26 O ’20

“His book is a bitter attack upon France, her people and her institutions. Where are the ‘fondness’ and the ‘sympathy’ that the author claims in his introduction?”

− =Boston Transcript= p6 Je 30 ’20 500w

=Cleveland= p90 O ’20 40w

“A book of real illumination, one wonders whether any one will really like it.”

+ =Dial= 69:666 D ’20 90w

“I know of no recent book which gives a better picture of the French people as they really are, both of their lovable and unpleasant qualities, nor of the economic and political and intellectual life of present day France than that by Mr Robert Dell, ‘My second country.’” Harold Stearns

+ =Freeman= 1:595 S 1 ’20 2050w

“Mr Dell writes of the French people with sympathy and affection, but does not allow those feelings to color his judgment or subdue his criticism.” B. U. Burke

+ =Nation= 111:103 Jl 24 ’20 1150w

=R of Rs= 62:223 Ag ’20 40w

− =Spec= 124:281 F 28 ’20 200w

“The book contains a great amount of concrete information, such as we require when trying to understand a foreign country. In fact, the whole book is valuable if the reader allows for the author’s bias. The account of radical political movements is particularly good.”

+ − =Springf’d Republican= p8 Je 15 ’20 450w

=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p94 F 12 ’20 850w

=DENNETT, TYLER.=[2] Better world. *$1.50 Doran

20–8457

“In brief the contention of this book is that we must have a better world; that the proposed League of nations is far from the effective agency to produce it, although it is a long step in the direction indicated; that the Christian religion has in it the power to create the convictions and popular demands which alone will guarantee any organization of a better world or bring into being more just and democratic programs than the one now under such discussion.”—Bib World

* * * * *

=Bib World= 54:652 N ’20 260w

“Mr Dennett is always worth reading because of the wealth of his personal experience and the freshness with which he presents his facts. In the present case, unfortunately, his endeavor to make out a good case for American mission work has led him to exaggerate certain tendencies and to argue at times illogically.” B. L.

+ − =Survey= 44:540 Jl 17 ’20 300w

=DENSMORE, HIRAM DELOS.= General botany for universities and colleges. il *$2.96 Ginn 580

20–5036

The book is intended for use in universities and colleges and is an outgrowth of the author’s long experience in giving introductory courses in botany to students. “The author’s aim in writing the book has been to furnish the student with clear statements, properly related, of the essential biological facts and principles which should be included in a first course in college botany or plant biology.” (Preface) Emphasis is placed throughout the book on the plant as a “living, active organism, comparable to animals and with similar general physiological life functions.” The contents fall into three parts of which the first is subdivided into the sections: Plants and the environment; Cell structure and anatomy; Physiology; Reproduction.