Life, 1902-12-11 · page 6 of 24
Life — December 11, 1902 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Latest Books" Book Review Page This is a literary review section from *Life* magazine featuring book reviews and illustrations. The main cartoon shows three figures walking together with the caption "ARE YOU SURE HE'S ENGAGED?" "HE TOLD ME HIMSELF." "WELL, DEN, I'M YOURS, WILLIE." The joke appears to be a play on miscommunication about engagement—likely a woman overhearing that a man said he was "engaged" (busy) and misinterpreting it as being engaged to marry, leading her to declare her own availability. The reviews discuss recent books by McCarthy, Crawford, Brady, Zangwill, and Jacobs. The upper illustration shows a dark scene labeled "SNAPSHOTS IN HADES," depicting figures in an underworld setting, accompanying reviews of stories with supernatural or dramatic themes.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
USTIN McCARTHY is writing history backward. He has now reached The Reign of Queen Anne, His style has always been a blend of McCarthy and Macaulay, and as he goes backward in English history the Macaulay increases and the McCarthy shrinks. His History of Our Own Times is wholly delightful. Witty, gossipy, frankly influenced by the personal equation. His Four Georges is still witty, and, as it were, gossipy at second hand. His present work is pleasant reading, but of necessity increasingly lacking in the most attractive qualities of his first histories. (Harper and Brothers. Two volumes.) For his story this year F. Marion Craw- ford again returns to Rome and in Ceciha gives us a new example of his charm asa narrator. The story is one which, owing to its suggestion of the occult and its use of telepathetic phenomena as an axis, requires most skilful presentation, and this Mr. Crawford has achieved. He has conceived far more virile tales, but he has seldom told one more delightfully. (The Macmillan Company. $1.50.) Our indefatigable friend, Cyrus Townsend Brady, has written another volume. Woven with the Ship, and Other Veracious Tales it is called. Mr. Brady is a veritable comet in the literary firmament. Having traversed other spheres he swept into the world of let- ters some three years ago, and has left be- hind him a whole galaxy of tales composed of imponderable matter. (J. 4 B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. $1.50.) £ + DEN, I'M YoURs, SNAPSHOTS IN HADES, New Inferno Victim: THe WOMEN OVER THERE DON'T APPEAR TO BE SUPPERINO A SEVERE PUNISHMENT. Demon Chauffeur? 1t*s WonSY, THAN IT LOOKS. THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT DRESS, AND HAVE TO WrAR THE SAME BONNETS YOR THREE THOUSAND YEARS. Whether or no Mr. Louis Zangwill is a mi- sogynist, he certainly has no very optimistic faith in the effect of modern social influences upon the character of women. His novel, One’s Womenkind, sums up his views in a well told and rather interesting story. It is an excellent picture of Hubert Ruthven's womenkind, but most of us will quarrel with the generalization of the title. (A. S. Barnes and Company. $1.50.) W. W. Jacobs, the author of Many Car- goes and other humorous sketches of Eng- lish coastwise shipping life, appears to have exhausted his favorite field and has gone inland for subjects in his latest volume of stories, which is called The Lady of the Barge. Mr. Jacobs, who saw the funny side of things at sea, seems to lean to the gruesome on land, but he still writes good stories. (Dodd, Mead and Company. $1.50.) The role of the rapid change artist is not an exalted one, but occasionally his efforts are amusing, and, where wit is added to nimbleness, mimicry is dignified into satire Mr. Owen Seaman is a literary Sissy Loftus, aud in Borrowed Plumes gives us some twenty impersonations of well-known writers of the day, some of which are really clever. (Henry Holt and Company.) J.B, Kerfoot. BE sure you are right—then sit down and think it over. comicbooks.com