The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Part 77

3. FISHER. Romantic Man. Secker.

4. LYONS. MARKET BUNDLE. b.u.t.terworth.

5. MCCALLIN. Ulster Fireside Tales. Heath Cranton.

6. MACKLIN, _translator_. 29 Short Stories. Philpot.

7. MOORMAN. Tales of the Ridings. Mathews.

8. MOORMAN. More Tales of the Ridings. Mathews.

9. STEIN. Three Lives. Lane.

10. WOOLF. Monday or Tuesday. Hogarth Press.

BELOW FOLLOWS A RECORD OF THIRTY DISTINCTIVE VOLUMES PUBLISHED BETWEEN OCTOBER 1, 1920 AND SEPTEMBER 30, 1921.

I. AMERICAN AUTHORS

GHITZA AND OTHER ROMANCES OF GYPSY BLOOD, by _Konrad Bercovici_ (Boni & Liveright). This is the best volume of short stories published by an American author this year. It consists of nine epic fragments which are studies in pa.s.sionate color of Roumanian gypsy life. Mr.

Bercovici's work bears no trace of special literary influences, and he has moulded a new form for these stories which disobeys successfully all the codes of story writing. Whether we are to regard him as an American or a European artist seems of little importance. The essential point is that he and Sherwood Anderson are the most significant new short story writers who have emerged in America within the past five years.

HOMESPUN AND GOLD, by _Alice Brown_ (The Macmillan Company).

Miss Brown's new collection of fifteen short stories, which she has written during the past thirteen years, is not one of her best books, but it is of considerable importance as one more contribution to the literature of New England regionalism. Its qualities of homely fidelity and quiet humor make it distinctly worth reading, and one story, "White Pebbles" ranks with Miss Brown's best work.

THE VELVET BLACK, by _Richard Washburn Child_ (E.P. Dutton & Company). I do not regard this as more than a piece of extremely competent craftsmans.h.i.+p, and its interest to the man of letters is largely technical, but it contains one excellent story full of dramatic suspense and a certain literary honesty. I think "Identified" might be commended to a short story anthologist.

THE SONS O' CORMAC, AN' TALES OF OTHER MEN'S SONS, by _Aldis Dunbar_ (E.P. Dutton & Company). This collection of fifteen Irish fairy and hero tales, told by a gardener to a little boy, show considerable deftness of fancy, and although the idiom Mr. Dunbar uses is borrowed and not quite convincing, his book seems to me almost as good as those of Seumas MacMa.n.u.s, which probably suggested it.

GREAT SEA STORIES (Brentano's) and MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY (4 vols.) (Doubleday, Page & Co.), edited by _Joseph Lewis French_. These anthologies, which are somewhat casually edited, are worthy of purchase by students of the short story who do not possess many anthologies, for they contain a number of standard texts. But I do not think highly of the selections, which are of a thoroughly conventional nature.

"MOMMA," AND OTHER UNIMPORTANT PEOPLE, by _Rupert Hughes_ (Harper & Brothers). This is an unimportant book containing one superb story, "The Stick-In-the-Muds," which I had the pleasure of printing last year in this series. It is one of the stories which Mr. Hughes has written for his own pleasure and not for the preconceived pleasure of his large and critical public. I consider that it ranks with the excellent series of Irish-American studies which Mr. Hughes published a few years ago.

MASTER EUSTACE, by _Henry James_ (Thomas Seltzer). This volume, which is a companion to "A Landscape Painter," reprints five more early stories of Henry James, not included in any American edition now in print. They have all the qualities of "Roderick Hudson" and "The American," and should be invaluable to the students of Henry James's technique. It would have been a matter of regret had these stories not been rendered accessible to the general public.

FAMOUS DETECTIVE STORIES and FAMOUS PSYCHIC STORIES, edited by _J. Walker McSpadden_ (Thomas Y. Crowell Company). These two anthologies have been edited on more or less conventional lines, but they contain several important stories which are not readily accessible, and I can commend them as texts for students of the short story.

TALES FROM A ROLLTOP DESK by _Christopher Morley_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). I record this volume for the sake of one admirable story, "Referred to the Author," which almost any contemporary of Mr.

Morley would have been glad to sign. Apart from this, the volume is ephemeral.

THE SLEUTH OF ST. JAMES'S SQUARE by _Melville Davisson Post_.

(D. Appleton & Company). This volume contains the best of Mr. Post's well-known mystery stories, and I take special pleasure in calling attention to "The Wrong Sign," "The Hole in the Mahogany Panel," and "The Yellow Flower." These stories show all the resourceful virtuosity of Poe, and are models of their kind. While they seem to me to possess no special literary value, they have solved some important new technical problems, and I believe they will repay attentive study.

DEVIL STORIES, edited by _Maximilian J. Rudwin_ (Alfred A.

Knopf). This is an excellent anthology revealing a wide range of reading and introducing a number of good stories which are likely to prove new to most readers. The editor has added to the value of the volume by elaborate annotation. He wears his learning lightly however, and it only serves to adorn his subject.

CHRISTMAS ROSES, AND OTHER STORIES, by _Anne Douglas Sedgwick_ (Houghton Mifflin Company). This admirable series of nine studies dealing with the finer shades of character are subdued in manner. Mrs.

de Selincourt has voluntarily restricted her range, but she has simply "curtailed her circ.u.mference to enlarge her liberty," and I believe this volume is likely to outlast many books which are more widely talked about.

CAPE BRETON TALES, by _Harry James Smith_ (The Atlantic Monthly Press). This little volume of short stories and studies deals with the Arcadian life of Cape Breton and the Gaspe coast. I am speaking from personal knowledge when I state that, this is the first time the Acadian has been understood by an English speaking writer, and if Mr.

Smith's art works within narrow limits, it is quite faultless in its rendering. This volume suggests what a loss American letters has sustained in the author's death.

II. ENGLISH AND IRISH AUTHORS

THE GOLDEN WINDMILL, AND OTHER STORIES, by _Stacy Aumonier_ (The Macmillan Company). For some years Mr. Aumonier has been quietly winning an important place for himself in English letters by his admirable short stories, and this place has been fittingly recognized by Mr. Galsworthy, among others, during the past year. Eight of the nine stories in the present volume seem to me as good as stories written in the traditional technique can be, and I regard this book as only second in excellence to the volumes of A.E. Coppard and Katherine Mansfield of which I shall speak presently.

MORE LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS, by _Thomas Burke_ (George H. Doran Company). It is a wise counsel of perfection which says that sequels are barred, and I do not believe that Mr. Burke has chosen wisely in endeavoring to repeat the artistic success of "Limehouse Nights." Apart from "The Scarlet Shoes" and "Miss Plum-Blossom," this volume seems to me to be second-rate, and I feel that Mr. Burke has already exhausted his Limehouse field.

ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME, by _A.E. Coppard_ (Alfred A. Knopf).

I have endeavored elsewhere to express my opinion of "Adam and Eve and Pinch Me" by dedicating this year's annual volume to Mr. Coppard. I believe that he ranks as an artist among the best continental writers.

He sees life as a pattern which he simplifies, and weaves a closely wrought fabric which is a symbol of human life as seen by a disinterested but happy observer. His range is wide, and if he presents the uncommon instance of a man who has absorbed all that two men as different as Chekhov and Henry James have to teach, he brings to this fusion a personal view which trans.m.u.tes the values of his masters into a new set of values. To do this successfully is the sign of a fine artist.

DEAD MAN'S PLACK, AND AN OLD THORN, by _W.H. Hudson_ (E.P.

Dutton & Company). Mr. Hudson's devoted readers have long known of the existence of these two stories, and have regretted that the author did not see fit to issue them in book form. The first story is a short study in historical reconstruction equal to the best of Jacobsen's work, while "The Old Thorn" ranks with "El Ombu" as one of Mr. Hudson's best two short stories. The volume is, of course, a permanent addition to English literature.

TOP O' THE MORNIN', by _Seumas MacMa.n.u.s_ (Frederick A. Stokes Company). Mr. MacMa.n.u.s's new collection of Irish tales has ups and downs like a Galway road, but his ups are very good indeed and show that he has by no means lost the folk imagination which made his early books rank among the very best of their kind. I can specially commend to the reader "The Widow Meehan's Ca.s.simeer Shawl," "The Bellman of Carrick,"

and "The Heart-Break of Norah O'Hara."

BLISS AND OTHER STORIES, by _Katherine Mansfield_ (Alfred A.

Knopf). I have no hesitation in stating after careful thought that Miss Mansfield's first book of short stories at once places her in the great European tradition on a par with Chekhov and De Maupa.s.sant. This is certainly the most important book of short stories which has come to my notice since I began to edit this series of books. I say this with the more emphasis because, although her technique is the same as that of Chekhov, she is one of the few writers to whom a close study of Chekhov has done no harm. Most American short story writers are bad because they copy "O. Henry," and most English short story writers are bad because they copy Chekhov. Chekhov and "O. Henry" were both great writers because they copied n.o.body. I hope that the success of Miss Mansfield's book will not have the effect of subst.i.tuting a new model instead of these two. Mr. Knopf is to be complimented for his taste in publis.h.i.+ng the best two volumes of short stories of the year. It is a disinterested service to literature.

A CHAIR ON THE BOULEVARD, by _Leonard Merrick_ (E.P. Dutton & Company). It is unnecessary at this date to point out the special excellences of Leonard Merrick. They are such as to ensure him a tolerably secure position in the history of the English short story. But it may be well to point out that the vice of his excellence is his p.r.o.neness to sentimentality. This is more evident in Mr. Merrick's other volumes than in the present collection, which is really a reissue of his best stories, including that masterpiece, "The Tragedy of a Comic Song."

If one were to compile an anthology of the world's best twenty stories, this story would be among them.

SELECTED ENGLISH SHORT STORIES (XIX AND XX CENTURIES), edited by _H.S.M._ (Oxford University Press). This volume has the merit of containing in very short compa.s.s twenty-eight stories by English and American authors, not too conventionally selected, which would form admirable texts for a short story course. It includes stories by Mark Rutherford and Richard Garnett which are likely to be unfamiliar to most readers, and if taken in conjunction with the previous volume in the same series, provides a tolerably complete conspectus of the development of the short story in England and America since 1800.

ORIGINAL SINNERS, by _Henry W. Nevinson_ (B.W. Huebsch, Inc.).

It has always been a mystery to me why Mr. Nevinson's short stories are so little known to American readers. His earlier volumes "The Plea of Pan" and "Between the Acts," are eagerly sought by collectors, but they have been permitted to go out of print, I believe, and the general public knows very little about them. To nine out of ten people, Mr.

Nevinson is known as a publicist and war correspondent, but it is by his short stories that he will live longest, and the present volume is one more ill.u.s.tration of the place which has always been occupied in English literature by the gifted amateur. The stories in the present volume all lead back by implication to the golden age, and if Mr. Nevinson's mood is elegiac, he never refuses to face reality.

IRISH FAIRY TALES, by _James Stephens_ (The Macmillan Company).

We think of Mr. Stephens primarily as a poet and an ironic moralist, but in the present volume a new side of his genius is revealed. It might seem that too many writers have attempted with more or less success to reproduce the spirit of the gray Irish Sagas by retelling them, and we think of Standish O'Grady, Lady Gregory, "A.E.," and others. But Mr.

Stephens has seen them in the fresh light of an unconquerable youth, and I am more than half inclined to think that this is the best book he has given us.

SAVITRI, AND OTHER WOMEN, by _Marjorie Strachey_ (G.P. Putnam's Sons). Marjorie Strachey has presented the feminist point of view in eleven short stories drawn from the folklore of many nations. Her object in telling these stories is a sophisticated one, and I suspect that her success has been only partial, but she has considerable resources of style to a.s.sist her, and I think that the volume is worthy of some attention.

THE THIRTEEN TRAVELLERS, by _Hugh Walpole_ (George H. Doran Company). Mr. Walpole has collected in this volume twelve studies of English life in the present transition stage between war and peace. He has studied with considerable care those modifications of the English character which are noticeable to the patient observer, and his volume has some value as an historical doc.u.ment apart from its undoubted literary charm. While it will not rank among the best of Mr. Walpole's books, it is full of excellent _genre_ pieces rendered with subtlety and poise.

III. TRANSLATIONS

THE HORSE-STEALERS AND OTHER STORIES, and THE SCHOOLMISTRESS AND OTHER STORIES, by _Anton Chekhov_ translated from the Russian by _Constance Garnett_ (The Macmillan Company). Mrs. Garnett's excellent edition of Chekhov is rapidly drawing to a conclusion. In the two volumes now under consideration we find the greater part of Chekhov's very short sketches, notably many of the humorous pieces which he wrote in early life. These are most often brief renderings of a mood, or quiet ironic contrasts which set forth facts without drawing any moral or pointing to any intellectual conclusion.

LITTLE PIERRE, and THE SEVEN WIVES OF BLUEBEARD, by _Anatole France_; edited by _Frederic Chapman_, _James Lewis May_, and _Bernard Miall_. (John Lane). The first of these volumes presents another instalment of the author's autobiography in the form of a series of delicately rendered pictures portrayed with quiet deftness and a laughing irony which is half sad. In "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" he has retold four legends and endowed them with a philosophic content of smiling ironic doubt which accepts life as we find it and preaches a gentle disillusioned epicureanism. Both volumes are faultlessly translated.

PEOPLE, by _Pierre Hamp_; translated by _James Whitall_ (Harcourt, Brace, and Company). Among the poets and prose writers who have emerged in France during the past ten years and formulated a new social and artistic philosophy, Pierre Hamp is by no means the least important figure. He has already published about a dozen volumes of mingled fiction and economic comment which form a somewhat detailed history of the French workingman in his social and industrial relations, but "People" is the first volume which has yet been translated into English. His att.i.tude as revealed in these stories is full of indignant pity, and he gives us a series of sharply etched portraits, many of which will not be forgotten readily. He does not conceal his propagandist tendencies, but they limit him as an artist less in these stories than in his other books. Mr. Whitall's translation is excellent, and conveys the author's rugged style convincingly.

LITTLE RUSSIAN MASTERPIECES in Four Volumes, chosen and translated from the Russian by _Zenade A. Ragozin_ (G.P. Putnam's Sons). This collection is valuable as a supplement to existing anthologies because it wisely leaves for other editors the most familiar stories and concentrates on introducing less known writers to the English-speaking public. The editor has broadened her scheme in order to include Polish authors. Among the less familiar figures who are here introduced, I may mention Lesskof, Mamin-Sibiriak, and s.l.u.tchefsky. I can cordially recommend this admirable series.

THE TWO FRIENDS AND OTHER STORIES, by _Ivan Turgenev_; translated from the Russian by _Constance Garnett_ (The Macmillan Company). Mrs. Garnett, to whom we are ever grateful, has surprised us delightfully by offering us some hitherto untranslated novelettes by Turgenev which seem to me to rank among his masterpieces. In each of them he has compressed a whole life cycle into a brief series of significant incidents and made them the microcosm of a larger human world. This is one of the most important volumes of the year.