The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 65

_The Ten Best American Books._

1. Bierce. Can Such Things Be? Boni & Liveright.

2. Bierce. In the Midst of Life. Boni & Liveright.

3. Brown. The Flying Teuton. Macmillan.

4. Burt. John O'May. Scribner.

5. Hergesheimer. Gold and Iron. Knopf.

6. Hughes. Long Ever Ago. Harper.

7. Hurst. Gaslight Sonatas. Harper.

8. Steele. Land's End. Harper.

9. Wolcott. A Gray Dream. Yale.

10. Wormser. The Scarecrow. Dutton.

_The Ten Best English Books._

1. Blackwood. The Empty House. Dutton.

2. Blackwood. John Silence. Dutton.

3. Blackwood. The Listener. Dutton.

4. Blackwood. The Lost Valley. Dutton.

5. Buchan. The Watcher by the Threshold. Doran.

6. Galsworthy. Five Tales. Scribner.

7. Harker. Children of the Dear Cotswolds. Scribner.

8. Jacks. The Country Air. Holt.

9. Phillpotts. Chronicles of Saint Tid. Macmillan.

10. Selincourt. Nine Tales. Dodd, Mead.

_The Ten Best Translations._

1. Andreyev. The Seven That Were Hanged. Boni & Liveright.

2. Barbusse. We Others. Dutton.

3. Chekhov. The Wife. Macmillan.

4. Chekhov. The Witch. Macmillan.

5. Dantchenko. Peasant Tales of Russia. McBride.

6. Dostoevsky. White Nights. Macmillan.

7. Gogol. Taras Bulba. Dutton.

8. Gorky. Creatures That Once Were Men. Boni & Liveright.

9. Gorky. Stories of the Steppe. Stratford.

10. Tagore. Mashi. Macmillan.

_Below follows a record of eighty-seven distinctive volumes published during 1918, before November first._

I. _American Authors_

_Her Country_, by _Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). In this short story by Mrs. Andrews there is a fine emotional quality, and the spiritual values, though nowhere overstressed, will remind the reader of "The Perfect Tribute," which still remains Mrs.

Andrews' best story. Written to a.s.sist the last Liberty Bond campaign, its significant interest is independent of its timeliness.

_In the Midst of Life_ and _Can Such Things Be?_ by _Ambrose Bierce_ (Boni & Liveright). To an Englishman, the lack of familiarity we show with Ambrose Bierce's stories is a mystery. If he were asked to mention our foremost short story writers, he would think of Poe, Hawthorne, Harte, O. Henry, and Bierce. Yet the name of Ambrose Bierce is almost unknown in this country. His publishers are to be congratulated on the critical ac.u.men that prompted them to reissue Bierce's stories in a new popular edition. No writer, with the possible exceptions of Stephen Crane and Henri Barbusse, has written of war with more pa.s.sionate vividness. Such stories as "The Horseman in the Sky," "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," and "Chickamauga" are among the best stories ever written by an American, and in the field of the macabre Bierce at his best is very nearly the equal of Poe. I suppose that "In the Midst of Life" is the better volume, but "Can Such Things Be?" almost rivals it in interest.

_Helen of Troy_, and _Rose_, by _Phyllis Bottome_ (The Century Company).

These two novelettes are studies in national and temperamental contrasts. Their deft characterization, subtle humor, and sense of place ent.i.tle them to a place beside the best novels of Ethel Sidgwick. They reveal a disciplined sense of poetry and a tolerance of outlook which spring from an older background than most American work.

_The Flying Teuton and Other Stories_, by _Alice Brown_ (The Macmillan Company). Last year I had occasion to express my belief that "The Flying Teuton" was the best short story that had been inspired by the war up to that time. It comes to us now in book form with a collection of Miss Brown's other stories of war and peace, revealing the old qualities of courage, imagination, poetry, and dramatic irony which we have come to a.s.sociate with the name of Miss Brown. I regard the book as her most satisfying contribution to the short story since "Meadow Sweet."

_John O'May_, by _Maxwell Struthers Burt_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). The wish which I expressed last year that Mr. Burt's stories should be collected in book form is now gratified by the appearance of this volume. It is one of the few indispensable collections of the year by an American author, and gives Mr. Burt a place among American short story writers beside that of Mrs. Gerould, Wilbur Daniel Steele, H. G. Dwight, and Charles Caldwell Dobie. Few writers have a more thoughtful technique or a more unerring sense of dramatic values.

_Home Fires in France_, by _Dorothy Canfield_ (Henry Holt & Company).

Here is a homely record of the new spirit that the war has developed in the homes of France, and of the human intercourse so rapidly cemented between the French people and ourselves. There is a quiet glow in these stories which idealizes the sufferings of France, and brings home to us poignantly the present realities of her sufferings. If the volume lacks the conscious art of "Hillsboro People," its substance has been shaped by a personal experience so intense that the book should live as a memorial long after the incidents which it records have pa.s.sed.

_Rush-Light Stories_, by _Maud Chapin_ (Duffield & Company). These poetic studies in place, though reminiscent of Gautier, are freshly told in a style that adequately mirrors the backgrounds of which they treat.

I find them to be delicately wrought, with a prismatic beauty of phrasing, which errs slightly on the side of preciosity.

_The Thunders of Silence_, by _Irvin S. Cobb_ (George H. Doran Company).

When this short story appeared in the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post this year, it was discussed widely as a polemic. It is not literature, but it is journalism at its very best, and has fine story values.

_Free and Other Stories_, by _Theodore Dreiser_ (Boni & Liveright). This collection of stories is uneven, but the best of it is the best of Mr.

Dreiser. In "The Lost Phbe," which I reprinted as one of the best short stories of 1917, a new legend was added to American letters which had much of the glamor of leisureliness of Hawthorne. Such a story as "McEwen of the Shining Slave Makers" is a fine imaginative projection into a new world, mirroring ironically our human pa.s.sions in the warfare of two tribes of ants under the blades of a gra.s.s forest. Of the social studies in this volume, all show the exact observation and conscientious acc.u.mulation of detail for which Mr. Dreiser is noted, and the absence of selective power in many cases which often weakens his best work.

_Battles Royal Down North_ and _Harbor Tales Down North_, by _Norman Duncan_ (Fleming H. Revell Company). These two collections contain the last stories which we shall have from the pen of Norman Duncan.

Reverting as they do to the Labrador sh.o.r.es of which he is the chief interpreter, they show no flagging in Mr. Duncan's power. No other writer has portrayed so vividly the wet gray sh.o.r.es of the Labrador, nor interpreted so sympathetically the character of the Labrador "Liveyere."

Such a story as "The Little Nipper o' Hide-an'-Seek Harbor" has not been surpa.s.sed by Mr. Duncan in his earlier books, and as one who knows the Labrador personally, I can testify to the reality and imaginative truth of Mr. Duncan's epic chronicles.

_Tales of Giants from Brazil_, by _Elsie Spicer Eells_ (Dodd, Mead & Company). These adaptations from the collections of Romero and others are an excellent introduction to the Portuguese folk lore of Brazil.

They are told by Mrs. Eells in a simple style which preserves their folk quality without any attempt to refine upon it.

_Cheerful-By Request_, by _Edna Ferber_ (Doubleday, Page & Co.). Miss Ferber is at her best in such a story as "The Tough Old Dog." In this story she has not sentimentalized her substance, but has accepted the sentimental values inherent in the theme and chronicled them faithfully.

Such a story as this is the product of regionalism in its best sense. In other stories in this volume Miss Ferber's characterization is of varying degrees of success. In the best of these stories her characters are individualized; in those which are less successful they remain types. But the volume is an important addition to the year's books by virtue of three or four stories included in it.

_Edgewater People_, by _Mary E. Wilkins Freeman_ (Harper & Brothers).

While this volume does not as a whole represent Mrs. Freeman's art at its best, it contains two fine stories in "The Ring With the Green Stone" and "A Retreat to the Goal," while "The Old Man of the Field" has much of Mrs. Freeman's familiar charm. These stories have the unity of New England village life.

_Great Ghost Stories_, edited by _Joseph Lewis French_ (Dodd, Mead & Company). This collection is fairly representative of the best ghost stories that can be gathered, though one misses "The Canterville Ghost"

and "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal," as well as any representation of Poe, de Maupa.s.sant, or Bierce. But it does contain twelve stories which may fairly be regarded as cla.s.sics in their field, and there is not one of them which is not of absorbing interest.

_Mimi_, by _J. U. Giesy_ (Harper & Brothers). This novelette is an idyl of the Latin quarter of Paris during the first year of the Great War.

Written in the tradition of Murger, it has his qualities and defects. It is slightly overstressed and somewhat carelessly written, but it has the human touch and good characterization. I commend it to the reader for its quiet emotional appeal.