Maria Edgeworth Part 14

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ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.

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FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES.

MARY LAMB.

BY ANNE GILCHRIST.

One volume. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

"The story of Mary Lamb has long been familiar to the readers of Elia, but never in its entirety as in the monograph which Mrs. Anne Gilchrist has just contributed to the Famous Women Series. Darkly hinted at by Talfourd in his Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, it became better known as the years went on and that imperfect work was followed by fuller and franker biographies,--became so well known, in fact, that no one could recall the memory of Lamb without recalling at the same time the memory of his sister."--_New York Mail and Express._

"A biography of Mary Lamb must inevitably be also, almost more, a biography of Charles Lamb, so completely was the life of the sister encompa.s.sed by that of her brother; and it must be allowed that Mrs.

Anne Gilchrist has performed a difficult biographical task with taste and ability.... The reader is at least likely to lay down the book with the feeling that if Mary Lamb is not famous she certainly deserves to be, and that a debt of grat.i.tude is due Mrs. Gilchrist for this well-considered record of her life."--_Boston Courier._

"Mary Lamb, who was the embodiment of everything that is tenderest in woman, combined with this a heroism which bore her on for a while through the terrors of insanity. Think of a highly intellectual woman struggling year after year with madness, triumphant over it for a season, and then at last succ.u.mbing to it. The saddest lines that ever were written are those descriptive of this brother and sister just before Mary, on some return of insanity, was to leave Charles Lamb. 'On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them slowly pacing together a little foot-path in Hoxton Fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining them, that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum.'

What pathos is there not here?"--_New York Times._

"This life was worth writing, for all records of weakness conquered, of pain patiently borne, of success won from difficulty, of cheerfulness in sorrow and affliction, make the world better. Mrs. Gilchrist's biography is unaffected and simple. She has told the sweet and melancholy story with judicious sympathy, showing always the light shining through darkness."--_Philadelphia Press._

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FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES.

GEORGE SAND.

BY BERTHA THOMAS.

One volume. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

"Miss Thomas has accomplished a difficult task with as much good sense as good feeling. She presents the main facts of George Sand's life, extenuating nothing, and setting naught down in malice, but wisely leaving her readers to form their own conclusions. Everybody knows that it was not such a life as the women of England and America are accustomed to live, and as the worst of men are glad to have them live.... Whatever may be said against it, its result on George Sand was not what it would have been upon an English or American woman of genius."--_New York Mail and Express._

"This is a volume of the 'Famous Women Series,' which was begun so well with George Eliot and Emily Bronte. The book is a review and critical a.n.a.lysis of George Sand's life and work, by no means a detailed biography. Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, the maiden, or Mme. Dudevant, the married woman, is forgotten in the renown of the pseudonym George Sand.

"Altogether, George Sand, with all her excesses and defects, is a representative woman, one of the names of the nineteenth century. She was great among the greatest, the friend and compeer of the finest intellects, and Miss Thomas's essay will be a useful and agreeable introduction to a more extended study of her life and works."--_Knickerbocker._

"The biography of this famous woman, by Miss Thomas, is the only one in existence. Those who have awaited it with pleasurable antic.i.p.ation, but with some trepidation as to the treatment of the erratic side of her character, cannot fail to be pleased with the skill by which it is done.

It is the best production on George Sand that has yet been published.

The author modestly refers to it as a sketch, which it undoubtedly is, but a sketch that gives a just and discriminating a.n.a.lysis of George Sand's life, tastes, occupations, and of the motives and impulses which prompted her unconventional actions, that were misunderstood by a narrow public. The difficulties encountered by the writer in describing this remarkable character are shown in the first line of the opening chapter, which says, 'In naming George Sand we name something more exceptional than even a great genius.' That tells the whole story. Misconstruction, condemnation, and isolation are the penalties enforced upon the great leaders in the realm of advanced thought, by the bigoted people of their time. The thinkers soar beyond the common herd, whose soul-wings are not strong enough to fly aloft to clearer atmospheres, and consequently they censure or ridicule what they are powerless to reach. George Sand, even to a greater extent than her contemporary, George Eliot, was a victim to ignorant social prejudices, but even the conservative world was forced to recognize the matchless genius of these two extraordinary women, each widely different in her character and method of thought and writing....

She has told much that is good which has been untold, and just what will interest the reader, and no more, in the same easy, entertaining style that characterizes all of these unpretentious biographies."--_Hartford Times._

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FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES.

EMILY BRONTe.

BY A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

One vol. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

"Miss Robinson has written a fascinating biography.... Emily Bronte is interesting, not because she wrote 'Wuthering Heights,' but because of her brave, baffled, human life, so lonely, so full of pain, but with a great hope shining beyond all the darkness, and a pa.s.sionate defiance in bearing more than the burdens that were laid upon her. The story of the three sisters is infinitely sad, but it is the enn.o.bling sadness that belongs to large natures cramped and striving for freedom to heroic, almost desperate, work, with little or no result. The author of this intensely interesting, sympathetic, and eloquent biography, is a young lady and a poet, to whom a place is given in a recent anthology of living English poets, which is supposed to contain only the best poems of the best writers."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._

"Miss Robinson had many excellent qualifications for the task she has performed in this little volume, among which may be named, an enthusiastic interest in her subject and a real sympathy with Emily Bronte's sad and heroic life. 'To represent her as she was,' says Miss Robinson, 'would be her n.o.blest and most fitting monument.' ... Emily Bronte here becomes well known to us and, in one sense, this should be praise enough for any biography."--_New York Times._

"The biographer who finds such material before him as the lives and characters of the Bronte family need have no anxiety as to the interest of his work. Characters not only strong but so uniquely strong, genius so supreme, misfortunes so overwhelming, set in its scenery so forlornly picturesque, could not fail to attract all readers, if told even in the most prosaic language. When we add to this, that Miss Robinson has told their story _not_ in prosaic language, but with a literary style exhibiting all the qualities essential to good biography, our readers will understand that this life of Emily Bronte is not only as interesting as a novel, but a great deal more interesting than most novels. As it presents most vividly a general picture of the family, there seems hardly a reason for giving it Emily's name alone, except perhaps for the masterly chapters on 'Wuthering Heights,' which the reader will find a grateful condensation of the best in that powerful but somewhat forbidding story. We know of no point in the Bronte history--their genius, their surroundings, their faults, their happiness, their misery, their love and friendships, their peculiarities, their power, their gentleness, their patience, their pride,--which Miss Robinson has not touched upon with conscientiousness and sympathy."--_The Critic._

"'Emily Bronte' is the second of the 'Famous Women Series,' which Roberts Brothers, Boston, propose to publish, and of which 'George Eliot' was the initial volume. Not the least remarkable of a very remarkable family, the personage whose life is here written, possesses a peculiar interest to all who are at all familiar with the sad and singular history of herself and her sister Charlotte. That the author, Miss A. Mary F. Robinson, has done her work with minute fidelity to facts as well as affectionate devotion to the subject of her sketch, is plainly to be seen all through the book."--_Washington Post._

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FIGURES OF THE PAST. From the Leaves of Old Journals. By Josiah Quincy (Cla.s.s of 1821, Harvard College). 16mo. Price $1.50

"There are chapters on life in the Academy at Andover, on Harvard Sixty Years Ago, on Commencement Day in 1821, the year of the author's graduation, and on visits to and talks with John Adams, with reminiscences of Lafayette, Judge Story, John Randolph, Jackson and other eminent persons, and sketches of old Washington and old Boston society. The kindly pen of the author is never dipped in gall--he remembers the pleasing aspects of character, and his stories and anecdotes are told in the best of humor and leave no sting. The book is of a kind which we are not likely to have again, for the men of Mr.

Quincy's generation, those at least who had his social opportunities, are nearly all gone. These pictures of old social and political conditions are especially suggestive as reminding us that a single life, only lately closed, linked us with days, events and men that were a part of our early history and appear remote because of the mult.i.tude of changes that have transformed society in the interval."--_Boston Journal._

WHIST, OR b.u.mBLEPUPPY? By Pembridge. From the Second London Edition.

16mo. Cloth. Price .50

DEFINITION OF b.u.mBLEPUPPY.--b.u.mblepuppy is persisting to play whist, either in utter ignorance of all its known principles, or in defiance of them, or both.

"'Whist, or b.u.mblepuppy?' is one of the most entertaining, and at the same time one of the soundest books on whist ever written. Its drollery may blind some readers to the value of its advice; no man who knows anything about whist, however, will fail to read it with interest, and few will fail to read it with advantage. Upon the ordinary rules of whist, Pembridge supplies much sensible and thoroughly amusing comment.