PEARL S. BUCK'S BOOK OF CHRISTMAS

Lyle Kenyon Engel, Mrs. Buck's frequent collaborator, has written the brief introduction Mrs. Buck had yet to write when she died to introduce her catholic collection of Christmas stories -- close to forty of them with several inclusions by Washington Irving, Frank R. Stockton, Hans Christian Andersen and also Daudet, Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, de Maupassant, Bret Harte, O. Henry, Eugene Field, Hawthorne, Howells. Even the wizard L. Frank Baum and of course Henry van Dyke. Not exactly a stocking present at this price but sempiternal sentimental favorites for all the family sitting around the tree unless they're watching a Hallmark production.