OF BOOKS AND MEN

A former professor of English at Hunter College contributes a collection of essays on writers of several centuries, English and American. Pleasantly instructive rather than illuminating; they are appreciative rather than critical. Well-known writers alternate with lesser known, and he seems to have chosen deliberately less familiar aspects for commentary, such as the short stories of Hardy, the poems of Chesterton. Among the famous names are Lamb, Housman, Conrad, Strachey, Galsworthy, Harris, Allison, among the less well known, Maurice Barin, Kate Chopin, and so on.