The Best Short Stories of 1920 Part 75

8. #Level.# Tales of Mystery and Horror. McBride.

9. #McMichael#, _Editor._ Short Stories from the Spanish. Boni & Liveright.

10. #Mayran.# Story of Gotton Connixloo. Dutton.

#The Best New English Publications#

1. #Gibbon, Perceval.# Those Who Smiled. Ca.s.sell.

2. #Mayne, Ethel Colburn.# Blindman. Chapman and Hall.

3. #Mordaunt, Elinor.# Old Wine in New Bottles. Hutchinson.

4. #O'Kelly, Seumas.# The Leprechaun of Killmeen. Martin Lester.

5. #Robinson, Lennox.# Eight Short Stories. Talbot Press.

6. #Shorter, Dora Sigerson.# A Dull Day in London. Nash.

7. #Lemaitre, Jules.# Serenus. Selwyn and Blount.

BELOW FOLLOWS A RECORD OF NINETY-TWO DISTINCTIVE VOLUMES PUBLISHED BETWEEN NOVEMBER 1, 1918, AND OCTOBER 1, 1920.

I. #American Authors#

#The Honourable Gentlemen and Others# and #Wings: Tales of the Psychic#, by _Achmed Abdullah_ (G. P. Putnam's Sons, and the James A. McCann Company). In the first of these two volumes, Mr. Abdullah has gathered the Pell Street stories of New York's Chinatown which have appeared in American magazines during the past few years. As contrasted with Thomas Burke's "Limehouse Nights," these stories reflect the oriental point of view with its characteristic fatalism and equability of temper. Four of these stories are told with the utmost economy of means and a grim pleasure in watching events unshape themselves. "A Simple Act of Piety"

seemed to me one of the best short stories of 1918. The other volume is of more uneven quality, and psychic stories do not furnish Mr. Abdullah with his most natural medium, but contains at least three admirable stories.

#Hand-Made Fables#, by _George Ade._ (Doubleday, Page & Company.) Mr.

Ade's new series of thirty fables are a valuable record of the war years in American life. They are written in a unique idiom full of color, if unintelligible to the foreigner. I think one may fairly say that Mr.

Ade's work is thoroughly characteristic of a large section of American culture, and this section he has portrayed admirably. Undoubtedly he is our best satirist.

#Joy in the Morning#, by _Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). This uneven collection includes two admirable stories, "The Ditch" and "Dundonald's Destroyer," to which I drew attention when they first appeared in magazines. The latter is one of the best realized legends suggested by the war, while the former is technically interesting as a thoroughly successful short story written entirely in dialogue. The other stories are of slighter content, and emotionally somewhat overtaut.

#Youth and the Bright Medusa#, by _Willa Cather_ (Alfred A. Knopf).

Fifteen years ago, Miss Cather published a volume of short stories ent.i.tled "The Troll Garden." This volume has long been out of print, although its influence may be seen in the work of many contemporary story writers. The greater part of its contents is now reprinted in the present volume, together with four new stories of less interest. These eight studies, dealing for the most part with the artistic temperament, are written with a detached observation of life that clearly reveals the influence of Flaubert on the one hand and of Henry James on the other, but there is a quality of personal style built up out of nervous rhythms and an instinctive reticence of personal att.i.tude which Miss Cather only shares with Sherwood Anderson among her American compatriots. She is more a.s.sured in the traditional quality of her work than Anderson, but hardly less astringent. I regard this book as one of the most important contributions to the American short story published during the past year, and personally I consider it more significant than her four admirable novels.

#From Place to Place#, by _Irvin S. Cobb_ (George H. Doran Company). I have frequently had occasion to point out in the past that Mr. Cobb's work, in depth of conception and breadth of execution, makes him the legitimate successor of Mark Twain as a painter of the ampler life of the American South and Middle West. In his new collection of nine stories, there are at least three which I confidently believe are destined to last as long as the best stories of Hawthorne and Poe. The most noteworthy of these is "Boys Will Be Boys," which I printed in a previous volume of this series. "The Luck Piece" and "The Gallowsmith,"

though sharply contrasted in subject matter, reveal the same profound understanding of American life which makes Mr. Cobb almost our best interpreter in fiction to readers in other countries. Like Mark Twain, Mr. Cobb is quite uncritical of his own work, and two of these stories are of merely ephemeral value. I should like no better task than to edite a selection of Mr. Cobb's stories in one volume for introduction to the English public, and I think that such a volume would be the best service American letters could render to English letters at the present moment.

#The Life of the Party#, by _Irvin S. Cobb_ (George H. Doran Company). I shall claim no special literary quality for this short story which Mr.

Cobb has reprinted from The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, but America usually shows such poverty in producing humorous stories that the infectious quality of this wildly improbable adventure makes the story seem better than it really is. It cannot be regarded as more than a diversion from Mr. Cobb's rich human studies of American life.

#Hiker Joy#, by _James B. Connolly_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). This series of stories about a little New York wharf-rat which Mr. Connolly has reprinted from Collier's Weekly are less important than the admirable stories of the Gloucester fishermen which first made his reputation.

They are told by the wharf-rat in dialect with a casual reportorial air which is tolerably convincing, and it is clear that they are based on a background of first-hand experience. Mr. Connolly's hand is not entirely subdued to the medium in which he has chosen to work, but the result is a certain monotony of interest.

#Twelve Men#, by _Theodore Dreiser_ (Boni & Liveright). These twelve portraits which Mr. Dreiser has transferred to us from life represent his impressions of life's crowded thoroughfares and his reactions to many human contacts. More than one of these portraits can readily be traced to its original, and taken as a group they represent as valuable a cross-section Of our hurrying civilization as we have. Strictly speaking, however, they are not short stories, but discursive causeries on friends of Mr. Dreiser. They answer to no usual concepts of literary form, but have necessitated the creation of a new form. They reflect a gallic irony compact of pity and understanding. The brief limitations of his form prevent Mr. Dreiser from falling into errors which detract somewhat from the greatness of his novels, and as a whole I command this volume to the discriminating reader.

#The Emperor of Elam, and Other Stories#, by _H. G. Dwight_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). Those who read Mr. Dwight's earlier volume ent.i.tled "Stamboul Nights" will recall the very real genius for the romantic presentation of adventure in exotic backgrounds which the author revealed. Every detail, if studied, was quietly set down without undue emphasis, and the whole was a finished composition. In the t.i.tle story of the present volume, and in "The Emerald of Tamerlane," written in collaboration with John Taylor, Mr. Dwight is on the same familiar ground. I had occasion three years ago to reprint "The Emperor of Elam"

in an earlier volume of this series, and it still seems to be worthy to set beside the best of Gautier. There are other stories in the present collection with the same rich background, but I should like to call particular attention to Mr. Dwight's two masterpieces, "Henrietta Stackpole Rediviva" and "Behind the Door." The former ranks with the best half-dozen American short stories, and the latter with the best half-dozen short stories of the world. I regard this volume as the most important which I have encountered since I began to publish my studies of the American short story.

#The Miller's Holiday: Short Stories From the North Western Miller#, Edited by _Randolph Edgar_ (The Miller Publishing Company: Minneapolis).

These fourteen stories reprinted from the files of the North Western Miller between 1883 and 1904 recall an interesting episode in the history of American literature. The paper just mentioned was the first trade journal to publish at regular intervals the best short stories procurable at the time, and out of this series was born "The Bellman,"

which for many years was the best literary weekly of general interest in the Middle West. The North Western Miller printed the best work of O.

Henry, Howard Pyle, Octave Thanet, James Lane Allen, Hamlin Garland, Edward Everett Hale, and many others, and it was here that Frank R.

Stockton first printed "The Christmas Wreck," which I should agree with the late Mr. Howells in regarding as Stockton's best story. I trust that the success of this volume will induce Mr. Edgar to edite and reprint one or more series of stories from "The Bellman." Such an undertaking would fill a very real need.

#Half Portions#, by _Edna Ferber_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). Edna Ferber shares with Fannie Hurst the distinction of portraying the average American mind in its humbler human relations. Less sure than Miss Hurst in her ability to present her material in artistic form, her observation is equally keen and accurate, and in at least two stories in the present volume she seems to meet Miss Hurst on equal ground. "The Maternal Feminine," in my opinion, ranks with "The Gay Old Dog" as Miss Ferber's best story.

#The Best Psychic Stories#, Edited by _Joseph Lewis French_, with an Introduction by _Dorothy Scarborough_ (Boni & Liveright). This very badly edited collection of stories is worth having because of the fact that it reprints certain admirable short stories by Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, and Fiona Macleod. If it attains to a second edition, the volume would be tremendously improved by omitting the compilation of irrelevant theosophical articles on the subject, and the subst.i.tution for them of other stories which lie open to Mr. French's hand in rich measure.

#Fantastics, and Other Fancies#, by _Lafcadio Hearn_, Edited by _Charles Woodward Hutson_ (Houghton Mifflin Company). This collection of stories, portraits, and essays which Mr. Hutson's industry has rescued from the long-lost files of The New Orleans Daily Item and The Times-Democrat belong to Hearn's early manner, when he sought to set down brief colored impressions of the old, hardly lingering Creole life which is now only a memory. In many ways akin to the art of Heredia, they show a less cla.s.sical att.i.tude toward their subject-matter, and are frankly experimental approaches to the method of evocation by sounds and perfumes which he achieved so successfully in his later j.a.panese books.

In these stories we may see the influence of Gautier's enamelled style already at work, operating with more precision than it was later to show, more fearful of the penumbra than his later ghost stories, and with a certain hurried air which may be largely set down to the journalistic pressure of writing weekly for newspapers. Notwithstanding this, many of the stories and sketches are a permanent addition to Hearn's work.

#Waifs and Strays: Twelve Stories#, by _O. Henry_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). This volume of collectanea is divided into two parts. First of all, twelve new stories have been recovered from magazine files. Three of these are negligible journalism, and six others are chiefly interesting either as early studies for later stories, or for their biographical value. "The Cactus" and "The Red Roses of Tonia," however, rank only second to "O. Henry's" best dozen stories. The second part of the book is a miscellany of critical and biographical comment, including also some verse tributes to the story writer's memory and a valuable index to the collected edition of "O. Henry's" stories.

#O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories#, 1919, Chosen by the _Society of Arts and Sciences_, with an introduction by _Blanche Colton Williams_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). The Society of Arts and Sciences of New York City has had the admirable idea of editing an annual volume of the best American short stories, and awarding annual prizes for the two best stories as a memorial to the art of "O. Henry." The present volume reprints fifteen stories chosen by the society, including the two prize stories,--"England to America," by Margaret Prescott Montague, and "For They Know Not What They Do," by Wilbur Daniel Steele. Five other stories by Mrs. Frances Gilchrist Wood, Miss Fannie Hurst, Miss Louise Rice, Miss Beatrice Ravenel, and Miss G. F. Alsop are admirable stories. The selection represents a fair cross-section of the year's short stories, good, bad, and indifferent, but the two prizes seem to me to have been most wisely awarded, and I conceive this formal annual tribute to be the most significant and practical means of encouraging the American short story. Toward this encouragement the public may contribute in their measure, as I understand that the royalties which accrue from the sale of this volume are to be applied to additional prizes in future years.

#The Happy End#, by _Joseph Hergesheimer_ (Alfred A. Knopf). Mr.

Hergesheimer's new collection of seven stories is largely drawn from the files of The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, and represents to some degree a compromise with his public. The book is measurably inferior to "Gold and Iron," but shows to a degree the same qualities of studied background and selective presentation of aspects in character which are most satisfyingly presented in his novels. In "Lonely Valleys," "Tol'able David," and "The Thrush in the Hedge," Mr. Hergesheimer's art is more nearly adequate than in the other stories, but they lack the authoritative presentation which made "The Three Black Pennys" a landmark in contemporary American fiction. They show the author to be a too frank disciple of Mr. Galsworthy in the less essential aspect of the latter's art, and their tone is too neutral to be altogether convincing.

#War Stories#, Selected and Edited by _Roy J. Holmes_ and _A. Starbuck_ (Thomas Y. Crowell Company). This anthology of twenty-one American short stories about the war would have gained measurably by compression. At least five of the stories are unimportant, and six more are not specially representative of the best that is being done. But "Blind Vision," "The Unsent Letter," "His Escape," "The Boy's Mother" and "The Sixth Man" are now made accessible in book form, and give this anthology its present value.

#The Great Modern American Stories: An Anthology#, Compiled and edited with an introduction by _William Dean Howells_ (Boni & Liveright). This is the best anthology of the American short story from about 1860 to 1910 which has been published, or which is likely to be published. It represents the mellow choice of an old man who was the contemporary, editor, and friend of most American writers of the past two generations, and in his reminiscent introduction Mr. Howells relates delightfully many of his personal adventures with American authors. Several of these stories will be unfamiliar to the general reader, and I am specially glad to observe in this volume two little-known masterpieces,--"The Little Room" by Madelene Yale Wynne, and "Aunt Sanna Terry," by Landon R. Dashiell. Mr. Howells' choice has been studiously limited to short stories of the older generation, and without infringing on his ground, it is to be hoped that a second series of "Great Modern American Stories" by more recent writers should be issued by the same publishers.

The present volume contains an excellent bibliographical chapter on the history of the American short story, and an appendix with biographies and bibliographies of the writers included, which calls for more accurate revision.

#Bedouins#, by _James Huneker_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). While this is primarily a volume of critical essays on painting, music, literature and life, it concludes with a series of seven short stories which serve as a postlude to Mr. Huneker's earlier volume, "Visionaries." They are chiefly interesting as the last dying glow of symbolism, derivative as they are from Huysmans and Mallarme. I cannot regard them as successful stories, but they have a certain experimental value which comes nearest to success in "The Cardinal's Fiddle."

#Humoresque#, by _Fannie Hurst_ (Harper & Brothers). Miss Hurst's fourth volume of short stories shows a certain recession from her previous high standard, except for the t.i.tle story which is told with an economy of detail unusual for her. All of these eight stories are distinctive, and six of them are admirable, but I seem to detect a tendency toward the fixation of a type, with a corresponding diminishment of faithful individual portrayal. The volume would make the reputation of a lesser writer, but Miss Hurst is after all the rightful successor of "O Henry,"

and we are ent.i.tled to demand from her nothing less than her best.

#Legends#, by _Walter McLaren Imrie_ (The Midland Press, Glennie, Alcona Co., Mich.). I should like to call special attention to this little book by a medical officer in the Canadian army, because it seems to me to be a significant footnote to the poignant records of Barbusse, Duhamel, and ?lie Faure. So far as I know, this is the only volume of fiction written in English portraying successfully from the artist's point of view the acrid monotony of war. I believe that it deserves to be placed on the same bookshelf as the volumes of the others whom I have just mentioned.

#Travelling Companions#, by _Henry James_ (Boni & Liveright). These seven short stories by Henry James, which are now collected for the first time with a somewhat inept introduction by Albert Mordell, were written at the same time as the stories in his "Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim." While they only serve to reveal a minor aspect of his genius, they are of considerable importance historically to the student of his literary evolution. Published between 1868 and 1874, they represent the first flush of his enthusiasm for the older civilization of Europe, and especially of Italy. He would not have wished them to be reprinted, but the present editor's course is justified by their quality, which won the admiration at the time of Tennyson and other weighty critics. Had Henry James reprinted them at all, he would have doubtless rewritten them in his later manner, and we should have lost these first clear outpourings of his sense of international contrasts.

#The Best American Humorous Short Stories#, Edited by _Alexander Jessup_ (Boni & Liveright). This collection of eighteen humorous short stories furnish a tolerable conspectus of the period between 1839 and the present day. They are prefaced by an informative historical introduction which leaves little to be desired from the point of view of information.

The general reader will find the book less interesting than the specialist, since a large portion of the volume is devoted to the somewhat crude beginnings of humor in our literature. Apart from the stories by Edward Everett Hale, Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton, Bret Harte, and "O. Henry," the comparative poverty of rich understanding humor in American fiction is remarkable. The most noteworthy omission in the volume is the neglect of Irvin S. Cobb.

#John Stuyvesant Ancestor and Other People#, by _Alvin Johnson_ (Harcourt, Brace & Howe). This collection of sketches, largely reprinted from the New Republic, is rather a series of studies in social and economic relations than a group of short stories. But they concern us here because of Mr. Johnson's penetrating a.n.a.lysis of character, which const.i.tutes a doc.u.ment of no little value to the imaginative student of our inst.i.tutions, and "Short Change" has no little value as a vividly etched short story.

#Under the Rose#, by _Arthur Johnson_ (Harper & Brothers). With the publication of this volume, Mr. Johnson at last takes his rightful place among the best of the American short story writers who wish to continue the tradition of Henry James. In subtlety of portraiture he is the equal of Edith Wharton, and he excels her in ease and in his ability to subdue his substance to the environment in which it is set. He surpa.s.ses Mrs. Gerould by reason of the variety of his subject matter, and as a stylist he is equal to Anne Douglas Sedgwick. I have published two of these stories in previous volumes of this series, and there are at least four other stories in the volume which I should have liked to reprint.

#Going West#, by _Basil King_ (Harper & Brothers). We have in this little book a reprint of one of the best short stories produced in America by the war. While it is emotionally somewhat overtaut, it has a good deal of reticence in portrayal, and there is a pa.s.sion in it which transcends Mr. King's usual sentimentality.

#Civilization: Tales of the Orient#, by _Ellen N. La Motte_ (George H.

Doran Company). Miss La Motte is the most interesting of the new American story writers who deal with the Orient. She writes out of a long and deep background of experience with a subtle appreciation of both the Oriental and the Occidental points of view, and has developed a personal art out of a deliberately narrowed vision. "On the Heights,"

"Prisoners," "Under a Winegla.s.s," and "Cosmic Justice" are the best of these stories. So definite a propagandist aim is usually fatal to fiction, but Miss La Motte succeeds by deft suggestion rather than underscored statement.

#Short Stories of the New America#, Selected and Edited by _Mary A.

Laselle_ (Henry Holt and Company). While this is primarily a volume of supplementary reading for secondary schools, compiled with a view to the "americanization" of the immigrant, it contains four short stories of more or less permanent value, three of which I have included in previous volumes of this series. It also draws attention to the admirable Indian stories of Grace Coolidge. The volume would be improved if three of these stories were omitted.

#Chill Hours#, by _Helen Mackay_ (Duffield and Company). We have come to expect from Mrs. Mackay a somewhat tense but restrained mirroring of little human accidents, in which action is of less importance than its effects. She has a dry, nervous, unornamented style which sets down details in separate but related strokes which build up a picture whose art is not altogether successfully concealed. The present volume, which reflects Mrs. Mackay's experiences in France during the war, is more even in quality than her previous books, and "The Second Hay," "One or Another," and "He Cost Us So Much" are noteworthy stories.