Literary Curiosity Research Articles

V.S. Naipaul and the 1946 Trinidad General Election

Precisely because history as verbal representation by man of his own past is by its very nature so full of hazard, so replete indeed with verisimilitude of sharply differentiated choices, ... it never ceases to excite. The historical discourse is world's oldest thriller. --Ranajit Guha (Prose 55) On 1 July 1946 first election featuring universal adult suffrage was held in Trinidad. As reported in island's leading newspaper of day, Trinidad Guardian, privilege of a lowered franchise expanded electorate nearly tenfold, from approximately 30,000 to 259,000 eligible voters (Momentous). This was a precipitous change, especially in a colony voting even on a limited scale had only been instituted a couple of decades before (1925), in an era when lingering doubts about qualifications of nonwhites and women had motivated institution of property, literacy, and age requirements that disenfranchised all but about 6 percent of population (Caton 628, Malik 69-70, 73, 75). (1) In 1946 these restrictions were lifted all at once. This election becomes a historical touchstone in early and journalism of Trinidad-born author V. S. Naipaul. Beginning in his first novel, The Mystic Masseur (1957), Naipaul focuses considerable attention on it, a focus that returns in a key section of his first work of journalistic or travel writing, The Middle (1962). (2) As readers of The Mystic Masseur may recall, it is 1946 election in which Naipaul's enterprising protagonist, Ganesh Ramsumair, transforms himself from a Hindu faith healer into a politician, initiating a personal metamorphosis that culminates in his becoming G. Ramsay Muir, M. B. E., a West Indian envoy operating in England and a shameless British mimic man (220).Nineteen forty-six is heralded in final paragraph of novel's opening chapter as the turning point of Ganesh's (18), and election and its aftermath constitute major focus of book's final three chapters. Even more notably, in a brief but pivotal (and now famous) section of The Middle Passage, Naipaul invokes 1946 election to showcase his vision of individualism of late colonial-era Trinidadians--the vision of his compatriots as opportunistic survivors in a social environment where it is felt that all eminence is arrived at by crookedness (72). The journalistic analysis of The Middle suggests authenticity of a Ganesh-type character, while in fictitious Ganesh Trinidadian picaroon finds a most personable and credible incarnation. This is an important recognition, for notion that Naipaul's journalistic works represent a decisive break from previous fictional work is something of a commonplace in Naipaul studies--one contributed to even by such a careful critic as Rob Nixon, who contrasts fierceness of The Middle Passage with bounteous comedy of early fiction (12). The relationship between these texts is not just a literary curiosity, nor are events of 1946 in Trinidad merely minutiae of West Indian history. For precisely because Naipaul introduces coherent interpretive paradigms from authoritative subject position of a societal insider, and because most of his readers are not in a position to bring any significant degree of parallel local knowledge to bear on his representations of places like West Indies, his perspectives have attained a level of influence seldom achieved by modern literary discourse. What began at inception of his career with representations of Trinidad has multiplied in a sweeping array of articles and book-length studies Naipaul articulates defining characteristics--as he sees them--of literally dozens of other societies, mostly in so-called Third World. Factor into this equation that Naipaul's predominantly hostile assertions are delivered in crisp, unsparing terms, and it is little wonder that he has emerged as a polarizing figure. …

'Wann ordnest Du Deine Bücher?' Die Bibliothek H. C. Artmann by Marcel Atze, Hermann Böhm

228 AUSTRIAN STUDIES l6 (20 8) explanation. His close readings of the laterworks focus particularly on character psychology, power, and sexuality and transvestism. They draw attention tomany aspects of Fritsch's work that have gone largely unnoted or unexplained by critics.At the same time, however, they are rarely carried through with complete conviction, largely because Alker's study has no interpretative framework beyond the biographical. The discussions of, for example, power and sexuality in Fasching, which explore questions of exposure, visibility and 'Dressur', are crying out to be brought into dialogue with Foucault, while his emphasis on transvestism invites an engagement with performative theories of gender. But these opportunities are not grasped, and the analyses remain unsatisfying as a result. Alker also largely eschews any kind of sustained narratological analysis, even though a nuanced appreciation of Fritsch's narrative techniques would have offered compelling support for his claims regarding the self-referential status of Fritsch's prose works. Thus, despite identifying the blind spots in Fritsch reception to date, Alker repeatedly returns to the kind of socio-political and biographical interpretation he seeks to avoid, thereby clipping his own interpretative wings in advance. Despite these limitations, Alker's book is a stimulating addition to the secondary work on Fritsch. Not only does itpoint theway forward for other critics dealing with the work of thismost fascinating author, but its comprehensive bibliography is a vital resource. Alker sends one back to Fritsch's texts with fresh eyes and whets the appetite for the edition of Fritsch's diaries which he is currently preparing. University of Durham J.J. Long and Catriona Firth 'Wann ordnest Du Deine B?cher?'Die BibliothekH. C. Artmann. Ed. byMarcel Atze and Hermann B?hm. Vienna: Sonderzahl Verlag. 2006. 239 pp. 19,80. isbn 978-3-85449-261-0. 'Ich habe Sorge um meine B?cher', Artmann confessed shortly before his death in 2000. 'Ich wollte einWaisenhaus, ein Orphaneum f?r B?cher machen. Damit die B?cher nicht in alle Welt verstreut werden. Da sammelt einer ein ganzes Leben an B?chern, und dann, zack, stirbt er, und dann sind die v?llig zerstreut'. Having acquired Artmann's literary estate, including his library, in 2004, theWienbibliothek im Rathaus finished inventorizing and cataloguing the c. 3500 books that formed themain part of the Nachlass in the following year. This important addition to theWienbibliothek's holdings makes available an outstanding biographical and literary historical source, vital for anyone concerned with Artmann's prolific uvre or the seminal role he played in the development of the post-1945 Austrian avant-garde. The present splendid volume celebrates the re-housing of his library as well as documenting the exhibition launched in 2006 to acquaint the reading public with the sheer range of items acquired: material in 70 languages, ranging from (over 250) dictionaries and grammars, numerous scientific treatises, translations, and deliberately non-canonical literaryworks frommany ages and AUSTRIAN STUDIES l6 (20 8) 229 inmany languages, to examples of the various forms of popular literature with which his work is associated. An impression of the gargantuan task of bringing order into such a disparate array of items acquired can be gained from the 'Ausstellungssystematik' reproduced at the end of the present volume. Since Artmann was notoriously nonchalant about the fate of his correspondence and literary papers, Wann ordnest Du Deine B?cher?' seeks to compensate bymaking substantial use of material from the records and reminiscences of friends, publishers, contemporary writers and admirers. In 'Artmanns B?cherwelt', one of the longest and most rewarding parts of the volume, the editors attempt to represent their subject's polymath diversity, sense of cultural adventurousness and infectious pleasure at happening upon some literary curiosity. For this purpose, they reproduce 21 pictures of books inhis collection, appending relatively brief commentaries on their provenance, importance for one or another strand ofArtmann's complex development as a writer and his conception of what good literature ought to offer.Two premises inform this section, and indeed the entire project: (i) 'Bibliotheken sind Autobiographien' and (ii) 'seine Bibliothek erm?glicht einen aufschlu?reichen Blick indieWerkstatt eines Autors'. Some of the books chosen for contextualizing commentary are arguably more of biographical...

Antiquarian Authorship: D'Israeli's Miscellany of Literary Curiosity and the Question of Secondary Genres

mous fourteenth edition of Isaac D'Israeli's remarkably successful anti quarian miscellany Curiosities of Literature (originally published in 1791), un derlines his parent's intense bookishness, calling him complete literary character, a man who really passed his life in his library.1 The elder D'Israeli indeed spent many if not all his days poring over printed books and manuscripts both in his own collection and, more importantly, in the library and archives of the British Museum, producing a stream of collec tions of curiosities, miscellanies, anecdotes, essays, and secret histories in a literary career spanning more than fifty years. A hybrid mix of extracts

The Lost Pamphlet Version of D. G. Rossetti's "The Stealthy School of Criticism"

IN OCTOBER OF 1871, STUNG TO ANGER BY ROBERT BUCHANAN'S HARSHLY critical essay of Poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti began writing a vitriolic response. The first three weeks of the month had been spent uncovering the identity of Buchanan, who had published his essay pseudonymously in the Contemporary Review. Hence came the title of Rossertti's rejoinder: of Criticism. These two pieces of writing form the heart of one of the most notorious controversies in English literary history, one that ruined Buchanan's reputation, precipitated the end of Rossetti's friendship with Swinbume, and helped shatter Rossetti's mental and physical health for good. It also fixed the terms of debate over Pre-Raphaelite poetry--particularly Rossetti's--for generations to come. However, our understanding of this episode has until recently been impaired by the absence of a key constitutive text. We know that Rossetti originally planned to issue a longer pamphlet version of his essay, but under the advice of friends and a lawyer, published instead a much-reduced text in the Athenaeum in December 1871. (1) The few printed copies of the suppressed pamphlet were thought to have been destroyed, but one has been found and is now held by the Huntington Library. More than twice the length of the Athenaeum essay, this pamphlet presents much new material, including a series of attacks on Buchanan's pseudonymity, remarks on literary genius and fame, and a variant version of Rossetti's parodic poem, Brothers. What is more, its outraged tone--quite at odds with the gentlemanly calm of the Athenaeum piece--reveals how deeply Buchanan's shaft had struck, giving us a prelude to the madness that would overtake Rossetti in the coming year. First announced by Arthur Freeman in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement, the pamphlet thus fills a crucial gap in the history of the Fleshly School controversy and in the study of the life and work of Dante Gabriel (2) Reflecting on the Stealthy School pamphlet in a memoir of his brother, William Michael Rossetti wrote in 1889: I never saw this pamphlet, nor I think any part of the MS. pertaining to it; neither did 1 ever enquire whether perchance Mr. Ellis or his printer yet owns a copy. Were such the case, the pamphlet might yet some day prove a literary curiosity to some of these zealots who are prompt with cheques for [pounds sterling]7 or [pounds sterling]10 in exchange even for a copy of Rossetti's boyish, privately printed, and insipid ballad, Sir Hugh the Heron. Whether the brochure really was a libel I have of course no means of judging.... My reader, who now knows as much about the pamphlet as I do, may be left to his own conjectures. (3) Two things may be said of this passage: first, William Michael knew much more about the contents of the pamphlet than he admits to in 1889; and second, in mentioning bibliographic zealots, he is referring directly to T. J. Wise, whose first purchase of Rossetti material from William was indeed a copy of Sir Hugh the Heron, for 5 guineas, on July 16, l888. (4) Wise spent the next several decades acquiring rare Rossetti items from William (while simultaneously attempting to secure William's authentication of Wise's forgeries). As Fredeman puts it, Wise regarded William as something of a literary cornucopia--or, more accurately, a golden goose--from whom he could inveigle an endless supply of manuscripts, private printings, and memorabilia (Wise-Forman, p. 64). The highly appetizing Stealthy School pamphlet was not forthcoming, however, although Wise came tantalizingly close the following year. Perhaps following William's hint in the above passage, Wise paid a visit to Ellis. According to Oswald Dought y, in 1890, Ellis refused the offers of Mr. T. J. Wise to purchase the sole copy of Rossetti's pamphlet, written in reply to Buchanan's attack in of Poetry, and because Rossetti had wished it to be suppressed, Ellis destroyed the document in the presence of Mr. …

Invisible Forms: A Guide to Literary Curiosities

Invisible Forms: A Guide to Literary Curiosities

Jacques Jouet and the Literature of Exhaustion

In the last two decades, Jacques Jouet has patiently constructed one of the most astonishing bodies of work in contemporary French literature. During that time, he has published some 40 volumes in a variety of literary genres. By turn a poet, a novelist, a playwright, a short story writer, an essayist, a lexicographer, and a member of the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Oulipo), Jouet never seems to rewrite himself--and such a consideration alone would serve to distinguish him from many of his peers. As diverse as they otherwise may be, one finds in each of Jouet's books a vast literary curiosity, a deep impulse toward innovation, and a will to test the possibilities of literature through the elaboration of what may appear in retrospect to be an evolving catalogue of the various forms available to a writer today. In short, Jacques Jouet is an experimentalist in the noblest sense of that word, a writer whose work comes to us fresh, each book a "new" book, all of them clearly the product of a literary imagination animated by a keen, ludic intelligence. Having followed his work closely for many years, I also believe it is legitimate to suggest that Jouet is a man of letters (as antiquated as that term may sound to our postmodern ear). He belongs thus to a species that is gravely endangered in our time and latitude; and consequently it is in an ecological spirit, conservationist but not conservative, that I shall present this account of his work.

Jacques Jouet and the Literature of Exhaustion

In the last two decades, Jacques Jouet has patiently constructed one of the most astonishing bodies of work in contemporary French literature. During that time, he has published some 40 volumes in a variety of literary genres. By turn a poet, a novelist, a playwright, a short story writer, an essayist, a lexicographer, and a member of the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Oulipo), Jouet never seems to rewrite himself--and such a consideration alone would serve to distinguish him from many of his peers. As diverse as they otherwise may be, one finds in each of Jouet's books a vast literary curiosity, a deep impulse toward innovation, and a will to test the possibilities of literature through the elaboration of what may appear in retrospect to be an evolving catalogue of the various forms available to a writer today. In short, Jacques Jouet is an experimentalist in the noblest sense of that word, a writer whose work comes to us fresh, each book a "new" book, all of them clearly the product of a literary imagination animated by a keen, ludic intelligence. Having followed his work closely for many years, I also believe it is legitimate to suggest that Jouet is a man of letters (as antiquated as that term may sound to our postmodern ear). He belongs thus to a species that is gravely endangered in our time and latitude; and consequently it is in an ecological spirit, conservationist but not conservative, that I shall present this account of his work.

Book Reviews of Naked Truths and Provocative Curiosities, Journeys Through the Market: Travel travellers and the Book Trade, The Business of Books, Invisible Forms: Literary Curiosities

Book Reviews of Naked Truths and Provocative Curiosities, Journeys Through the Market: Travel travellers and the Book Trade, The Business of Books, Invisible Forms: Literary Curiosities

In Keeping With Modern Views: Publishing Epitaphs in the Nineteenth Century

Barker's sentiments were not isolated. Concerned churchmen and secular writers alike voiced similar calls for greater attention to the monuments and the epitaphs within the churches and churchyards of England, and the publication of hundreds of epitaph collections and anthologies responded to such appeals. What resulted were not only guides for stone masons, but a proliferation of literature on epitaphs of all kinds, from collections of gravestone humor to exhaustive compilations of the inscriptions from entire parish churchyards, tombstone by tombstone. A sampling of these anthologies provides several important insights into how the Victorians regarded epitaphs and commemoration. The transformation of the churchyard, the laborer's only library, into a book signaled a change in how epitaphs were encountered, experienced, read. The printed page substituted for, even at times supplanted, the commemorative function of epitaphs, and, in time, the epitaph in print, unattached to the tomb, became a literary curiosity in circulation, rather than an identifying and descriptive inscription on a

The Use of Owners' Jingles in Italian Vernacular Manuscripts

"The Use of Owners' Jingles in Italian Vernacular Manuscripts." Manuscript colophons furnish imponant codicological information regarding scribes, dates, and locations of production. Additional information, in prose or verse, was often included or appended to these formal statements of completion. Most colophon Studies have focused on monastic codices in Latin or on "popular" examples in English, French and German. After the emergence of vernacular languages and the increase in literacy, clerical and professional practices passed to the noncommercial lay copyist. Scribes or book owners, often the same person, at first imitated or translated Latin concluding formulae, but soon developed new forms which reflected the exigencies of the nonscholastic reader. This study identifies verses in Italian which were copied by late medieval merchants or tradesmen into books produced for their private enjoyment. These rhymes are more than literary curiosities: they document the owners' immediate concerns for the books' preservation, indicate how vernacular texts circulated, and offer rare glimpses into book usage in a domestic setting.

Delphine (review)

194 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 5:2 On this subject Cumberland may have been as confused as the best of them. His Sophian spokesman complains of European brides appearing tiie day after their wedding night, "without blushes, though ruffled with tiie inordinate first rites of impetuous love: and, still more strangely indelicate, instead of fanning the mysterious flame, by soft denials, and secret conjunctions, they occupy the same pallet openly, and nightly" (p. 68). The narrator finds it quite otherwise with his Sophian lover: "The transporting hours we enjoyed were greatly enhanced by the imagined secrecy of our appointments; and, although there is no doubt that the good family in which we resided, saw, and rejoiced at our union, they had the generosity to conceal from us the discovery" (p. 72). One suspects that Cumberland's preference for "secret conjunctions" was based on something other than concentrated thought on the subject of comparative ethics. Cumberland's novel has a certain value as a literary curiosity, since it is the work of a friend of William Blake. Bentley suggests that in writing part 1 of The Captive of the Castle of Sennaar Cumberland was influenced by Blake's thinking (p. xxxviixli ). It seems, however, that Cumberland's admiration for Blake was largely confined to his work as a graphic artist. In the British Library's copy of Cumberland's poems "Lewina the Maid of Snowdon" and "A Poem on the Landscapes of Great-Britain" (both printed in 1793 and, in this instance, bound together as a single volume), there is an inscription to the Rev. J. Eagles, written by Cumberland some time after 1810, in which he says "you are the only Poet I was ever acquainted with except S. Rogers" (i.e., Samuel Rogers). Cumberland seems to have decided not to publish part 1 of The Captive ofthe Castle ofSennaar in 1798 for fear of being prosecuted by the government on account of one provocative paragraph that might easily have been excised from the text, and Bentley suggests (p. xliv n. 10) that similar fears had led to the suppression of Blake's French Revolution in 1791. This suggestion, though not original, is not altogether plausible, and in 1798 Cumberland acted very naively in following tiie advice proffered by Henry Erskine that his provocative paragraph was "dangerous, under Mr. Pitt's maladministration." The Henry Erskine referred to (p. xliv) is presumably the Hon. Henry Erskine, leader of the Edinburgh bar, a man eminently qualified to give an opinion on the legal system and the prevailing political conditions in Scotland but almost totally ignorant of the very different legal position and political climate south of the border. But even if one is left unconvinced by Bentley's presentation of Blake and Cumberland as a pair of prophets forced to censor themselves for fear of government prosecution, any material that adds to what we know about William Blake's intellectual milieu is to be welcomed. A.D. Harvey London Germaine de Staël. Delphine. 2 vols. S. Balayé et L. Omacini, Edition critique; L. Omacini, L'Avant-texte: contribution à une étude de critique génétique. Textes littéraires français, n05 346, 386. Geneva: Droz, 1987, 1990. 1040, 575pp. SFr. 80, 90. The publication by Lucia Omacini of the surviving drafts of Delphine is an indispensable supplement to the critical edition brought out by the same editor and Simone Balayé, the doyenne of Staël-studien, in 1987. Together, the two volumes constitute a monumental contribution to our knowledge of a work that may one day, at least for those who are REVIEWS 195 not put off by its long-windedness, enjoy the canonical status in feminist literature that it once had for students of Romanticism. The virtues of volume 1 will already be familiar to most specialists. I shall simply recapitulate them as briefly as possible in order to focus thereafter on volume 2, half tiie size but double tiie value of its predecessor, in terms of new material and critical interest. Apart from the text (all 900-odd pages of it), the earlier volume contained an historical introduction, emphasizing the links between Delphine and Madame de Staël's life...

Disraeli's Political Trilogy and the Antinomic Structure of Imperial Desire

Recent history provides few examples of successful careers founded on literary careers. When politicians turn to letters, they usually do so after leaving the wars to beguile the hours of retirement by constructing overly-detailed, self-aggrandizing memoirs. Benjamin Disraeli's career is unique in this respect. The son of a collector of literary curiosities who was admired by Byron, Disraeli forced his way into and thence into the House of Commons at least partly by cultivating a reputation as a somewhat unscrupulous literary figure. The notoriety which descended on him after he was revealed as the author of the roman a clef Vivian Grey, much discussed in London in the late 1820s, helped provide him with entrance to important literary and circles, although it is no doubt also true that the controversial way in which Disraeli's publisher promoted the book (it was puffed as the work of an anonymous society insider with access to the highest circles) hurt him by cementing in the minds of some influential people the feeling that he was a ruthless, untrustworthy, bounder.' Nevertheless, one token of Disraeli's modernity is the way he was able throughout his career to use publicity of any kind, whether positive or negative, to promote his own interests. Being notorious was for him simply another and sometimes more effective way of being known. Disraeli continued to write novels throughout his career, completing his last-Endymion-in 1880 after six years of service as prime minister. The publication of the three books of the so-called political trilogy of the 1840s coincided roughly with his greatest Parliamentary successes: his defeat of Peel over the Corn Law issue and his subsequent recognition as titular head of the Tory party in the Commons. This of Disraeli's rise to preeminence and his writing of the three books-Coningsby, Sybil, and Tancred-by which he is chiefly known as a novelist by posterity, is, I submit, no coincidence at all but rather a demonstration of the importance of Disraeli's novels in positioning him ideologically on certain prominent questions of the 1840s. To Disraeli, novel-writing was a very expedient act of ambition which, like the artificially curled hairlock adorning his forehead and the black velvet waistcoat which he wore early in his career, set him visibly apart from the sober landed aristocrats in the Commons to whose ideological beliefs he had pledged public allegiance.

Interviews , and: Silence and Narrative: The Early Novels of Gertrude Stein , and: The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechlen (review)

Reviewed by: Interviews, and: Silence and Narrative: The Early Novels of Gertrude Stein, and: The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechlen Michael J. Hoffman Djuna Barnes .Interviews. Ed. Alyce Barry, with Foreward and Commentary by Douglas Messerli. Washington, D.C.: Sun & Moon, 1985. 396 pp. $16.95. Janice L. Doane . Silence and Narrative: The Early Novels of Gertrude Stein. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood P, 1986. 189 pp. $27.95. Edward Burns , ed. The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechlen. N. Y.: Columbia UP, 1986. volumes, 901 pp. $75.00 (set). Twenty-five years ago, when I began my Ph.D. thesis on Gertrude Stein, she was a literary curiosity. Although well known, she was little read, with only a few books in print, and while much had been written about her, there was little active Stein scholarship in American universities. Since that time a whirlwind of activity has developed around the enormous Stein canon. Almost all her work is now in print, and books and articles appear at an impressive, accelerating tempo. I also remember reading Djuna Barnes's Nightwood at that time—the only one of her works available in paperback—to become familiar with another difficult modernist author. I found Barnes to be as obscure as Stein, and it was many years before I read another book by her. While Barnes's reputation has not yet achieved the stature of Stein's, her writings are now being published, many of them collected from long-forgotten periodicals or old newspapers and printed for the first time in a book. Biographies and critical studies have also appeared, and with the burgeoning scholarly interest in such matters as modernism, [End Page 611] expatriation, feminism, and lesbianism, Barnes, like Stein, seems ready for academic prominence. The collection of Barnes's Interviews is an example of the recovery of her buried materials. Who would have thought the author of Nightwood and Antiphon had written slick, entertaining popular journalism? Nonetheless, that is what we have in this set of almost 40 interviews with artists and celebrities written between 1913 and 1931. Many names have receded into obscurity, but many others remain well known, and these glimpses into Lillian Russell, Diamond Jim Brady, Flo Ziegfeld, Billy Sunday, Jess Willard, David Belasco, Alfred Stieglitz, James Joyce, and Coco Chanel retain a fascination similar to that of reading the latest Sunday supplement. Most surprising of all is that Barnes's standards seem in no way higher than the average interviewer's, and even with her greater sensibility, we find ourselves longing for the ironic stance of the "new journalist." What Barnes does display is a cavalier attitude toward the actual words of the interviewees. The quotations are often pure Djuna, meant to catch the general aura of her subject rather than the words of actual speech. Here, for instance, is Billy Sunday on why slower-paced preachers are afraid of him: "Their pace was all right in the slow days, but you have got to catch up with those crazy, tango-mad, hugging-match-set-tomusic people." One could conjecture that the grotesque characters in Barnes's "art" works emanate from the famous eccentrics she met as a clever young journalist. But what one most remembers from these seductive, evocative portraits is their language, as in the closing paragraph on Lillian Russell: Out of the purple dusk I walked, and the simple-minded procelain Chinaman smirked at me from the piano, and the wise-mouthed sun god rolled sightless eyes toward the peacock feathers and the army of silver mugs, and the incense rolled on and up about the chair like a throne with its burden like a queen. (56) These pieces originally appeared in the New York Press, Bruno's Weekly, the New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, the New York Sun Magazine, Vanity Fair, Charm, McCalls, the Theatre Guild Magazine, Physical Culture, and Unmuzzled Ox. Dates are given for each article, but the place of publication for individual pieces is not. Surely the editor could have done that much for us. Janice Doane's study of Stein's early novels is a modest contribution to the growing literature on that author. Doane...

Evidence for the Date of Herodotus' Publication

In this paper I contest the usually accepted terminus for the date of the publication of Herodotus' Histories, namely, just prior to the production of the Acharnians in February 425. I argue instead that Herodotus survived the Archidamian War—basically a return, this, to the position taken until the middle of the last century, especially in Germany, before the work of Schoell, Kirchoff and then Meyer and Jacoby. Further, I suggest that he published at a date close to 414 B.C. or, at least, that his Histories reached the Athenian public at around that time. Since even the orthodox date for his publication (426 or so) figures in the constructions of modern scholars merely as a literary curiosity devoid of significance—such are the preconceptions dominating our notion of Herodotus' ‘era’—a reconsideration of this question needs no apology if it serves the purpose of directing attention to a matter vitally affecting our interpretation of this author.First, a general observation. In seeking for external evidence to establish the date of the publication of Herodotus' Histories, we need to distinguish between possible and certain echoes of Herodotus in the works of others. The question must constantly be asked whether any allusion we have isolated presupposes and requires the knowledge of Herodotus' work on the part of the contemporary audience. For otherwise we could be misled by a coincidence or we could reach a false conclusion because some point of specific knowledge eludes us. Of the latter the famous parallel in the Antigone of Sophocles (909 ff. with Herodotus iii 119) provides a notable example. If Herodotus had been just a little more strict with himself in avoiding allusions to his own time, who would not suppose that his work had been published prior to 441? What we require, therefore, is material which is calculated to evoke Herodotus himself—the special characteristics of the man and his Histories—so as to leave in no doubt a general familiarity with his work on the part of others.

Two Renaissance Views of Carthage: Trissino’s Sofonisba and Castellini’s Asdrubale

The Sofonisba of Trissino, which belongs to the beginning of the sixteenth century, is generally named as the first regular tragedy. This literary curiosity I cannot boast of having read, but from other sources I know the author to be a spiritless pedant. Those even of the learned, who are most zealous for the imitation of the ancients, pronounce it a dull labored work, without a breath of true poetical spirit; we may, therefore, without further examination, safely appeal to their judgement upon it.l Since August Schlegel wrote those words in 1809 a long series of critics have been content to accept his estimate of Sofonisba, without his candor, however, in acknowledging their ignorance of the work itself. There has been some degree of revaluation done by modern Italian editors, and I should like here to re-examine the tragedy and Trissino's purpose in writing it, and to compare it with another Carthaginian tragedy written forty-five years later, the Asdrubale of Jacopo Castellini. When Giangiorgio Trissino began to compose Sofonisba in 1514, he was twenty-six. 2 A nobleman of Vicenza, wealthy, educated by some of the leading humanists of the day, an enthusiast for Greek literature, he was forced in 1509 to leave his native city when it was captured by Venice from the Emperor, whose party he had supported. For eight years he lived in Ferrara, Mantua, and Rome; he met most of the leading figures of the era, and became the friend and correspondent of Lucrezia Borgia and her sister-in-law, Isabella d'Este, married to Duke Francesco Gonzaga. Sofonisba was written at least in part in Rome, and was dedicated to the Medici Pope, Leo X. It was

A Realist Experiments with Impressionism: Hamlin Garland's "Chicago Studies"

rW tRITTEN IN THE i890's but unpublished until now, Hamlin Garland's Chicago Studies contradict the assumptions generally held about his work and literary theory. They show Garland, then a realist with a homely style, making an uncharacteristic excursion into fanciful impressionism and elaborately figurative language. But though they are a radical departure from the objective method and plain prose of Main-Travelled Roads, the Chicago Studies are of more interest than merely as a literary curiosity. They reveal an author, one who found himself in the artistic doldrums, making an unusual effort to enlarge his repertory and to refine his technique. And they incidentally suggest that Garland's attempt at self-improvement may have been colored by the influence, hitherto unsuspected, of Stephen Crane.

Utopia and European Humanism: the Function of the Prefatory Letters and Verses

The letters and verses written for the early editions of Utopia by Sir Thomas More and his fellow humanists have had remarkably little influence on More's critics and in later editions have been reprinted (if at all) more as literary curiosities than as significant contributions to our understanding of the work. Yet the very extent and range of this appended material would suggest that it was meant to play an important rôle. The first edition, printed by Thierry Martens at Louvain in 1516, includes a Utopian quatrain 'translated’ by Peter Giles, the Hexastichon Anemolii or ‘shortc meter of Utopia', verses by Gerhard Noviomagus, Cornelius Grapheus, and John Paludanus, and the letters of Giles to Jerome Busleiden, Busleiden to More, Paludanus to Giles, and More to Giles.

London Clubs and Their Libraries

Each of these London West End clubs whose libraries I have been visiting is an association of men with interests of a special kind, mainly political, professional or artistic. The libraries, therefore, have this peculiar interest: they reflect the more serious tastes and avocations of the upper crust of London society. Most possess literary treasures or curiosities not, or rarely, to be found elsewhere. The difference between them and other libraries might be likened to the difference between a public park and a private garden. They are very personal.

The Bay Psalm Book and Harvard Hymnody

The Bay Psalm Book, which was printed here in Cambridge three hundred years ago this summer, is something much more significant than a bibliographical rarity or a literary curiosity. Its early editions are, of course, choice items of Americana for collectors, and its verse, which at first sight seems so uncouth, has provoked the derision or sarcasm of unsympathetic critics who have done no more than glance at it. Unfortunately most people know little more about the book than these widely publicized facts. But the Bay Psalm Book deserves respectful consideration on other and better grounds, for it is the earliest literary monument of the English-speaking colonists on this continent; it is a key to an understanding of their religious life; and it was the fountain-head of that great stream of later American hymnody of which it is the direct spiritual ancestor.

The arms of the Society

John Evelyn was keenly interested in the early organization of the Society, and when the question of suitable arms was under consideration he appears to have prepared at least six designs. Charles John Smith, the antiquary, included these in his Historical and Literary Curiosities , published a hundred years ago ; and the plate from that work is reproduced on page 38. Evelyn’s heraldic efforts, however, came to nothing, for in August 1662 Charles II. informed the Society that it might use ‘the armes of England . . . in a canton' in its arms; and in the following month the present form of the arms was approved. ‘We now resolv’d,' wrote Evelyn in his Diary under 17 September 1662,‘ that the armes of the Society should be, a field Argent, with a canton of the armes of England ; the supporters two talbots Argent; Crest, an eagle Or holding a shield with the like armes of England, viz. 3 lions. The words Nullius in verba .'The King approved the form of the arms, and gave orders ‘to Garter King at Armes to passe the diploma of their office for it.’How far Evelyn was responsible for the motto it is impossible to say: it will be noted that on the reproduced sketch of his heraldic designs it appears twice.