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Show OOMHEUT AND GOSSIP " 4 OP BOOKS AND AUTHORS. Volumes I. and II. of Herbert TT. Paul's History of Modern England will be published by the MacmUJan company in October. W. R. H. Trowbridge, the well r. membered .author of "The Letters of Her Mother to Elisabeth," has written an intensely absorbing romance of the French revolution, entitled "Egleei A Girl of the People." . "Thompson's ProgTess., the new story by Cutcllffe Ilyne, which the Macmlllan Mac-mlllan company will publish toward the end of June, shows this clever writer in a new field. Having finished with "Captain Kettle." he now tells a spirited tale about a roan who begins life as a poacher. - Miss Frances Charles, the author of "In the Country God Forgot," has gone farther west from Arizona to California Califor-nia In her new book, "The Siege of Youth." and lays the scene of her present pres-ent story In San Francisco, her home city. The color Is said to be true to life, the love episodes full of human inter- . est and the dialogue brisk. "That Brinter of Udells," by Harold Bell Wright, Is a story of the Middle West full of local color. The opening scene is laid In the moonshiners dls- . trict of Arkansas. From there the story soon carries the reader Into the more familiar localities of the West and i later on returns for a time to the life of A the mountaineer in the Ozarks. There r Is a continuous love story throughout cleverly worked out and interesting. Kipling began one of his short stories onoe with: "This is not a story, but a tract and the making of a tract Is a feat to be proud of." So might Bradley Oilman have prefaced his story, "Ronald "Ron-ald Carnaquay," with the remark that. "This Is not a novel It is a duU and uninteresting tale of the difference be- . tween two preachers, both of whom are called to "serve" a Uttle church In a small town. Mr. GUman uses this slight frAnework of a story to preach a great many duU sermons, and as a consequence conse-quence his book Is very hard to read, and when It Is read. Is found to be not worth while. e Within a few weeks the Macmlllan company will publish three volumes by Mr. W. B. Teats, who is coming to be well known among the younger Irish poets and essayists. - One of these is a new edition of "The Celtic Twilight," which is reprinted with a portrait and a number of additional chapters. Another An-other is "Ideas of Good and Evil." which . consists In essays of more general Interest In-terest than those in .the previous book. The third Is a play, entitled "Where There is Nothing." Mr. Teats is well known and greatly admired in Ireland, where bis feUow poets regarded his work highly several years before people in England paid any attention to it. .'-' .'-' "A Daughter of Thespls." by John D. Barry, is a reprint of a story that can as a serial In a popular periodical some years ago. It tells the story of the career ca-reer of an actress with the Insight Into the private life and aspirations of stage " folk that a man who has been a drama h tic critic for some-years might be ex-v pected to have. With the loves -an jealousies of actors and actresses, the! J''-" life during the summer, their hunt for , engagements, their work at rehearsals, all this is faithfully set out and it makes an Interesting tale. The story of the heroine's escape from the stag by her marriago with a successful playwright is well workedout. (Boston: I C Page ' & CO.) . , Since "The Scarlet Letter one can : ' think of no novel dealing with wttch craft days worthy to be placed beside that classic. When a certain period In ' -history has been selected by a great novelist and made the background of a wonderful story that will live for many generations, it would seem nothing short of sacrilege for another writer . to come forward with the same scenio . equipment, even though he has a vastly vast-ly different tale to tell and vastly dlf- ' ferent characters to launch forth - i. In his drama. One takes up "A Purl- tan Witch," by Marvin Dana, with, perhaps, some such feeling; but that feeling is dissipated after a reading of only one or two chapters. Here is a story so strong, so noble.- so sincere, so thoroughly picturesque, that one mar- ' " vels why more authors since Haw-thorne Haw-thorne have not utilized ths splendid color of the gruesome time he wrote of. The three stories, contained -in -the volume. "The Roman Road.", by "Zack." are distinguished by those qualities of tragic force and ortginsllty which won such success for this writer's "The White Cottage." "On Trial" and "Life I Is Life." Ths methods of Zack. are art '. her own. Her characters are drawn in free, broad strokes, so that they stand vividly before one, but it is the motives mo-tives that move the characters, the problem of what the human soul Is capable of under this or that clrcura-stance clrcura-stance that occupy the writer, rather -than a study of ext?mal conditions. , - |