PREFACE

This book is not properly titled. It should not have been called “The Bookman Anthology of Essays.” This is not a collection of essays; but of sketches, of discussions, of literary jottings, miscellaneous pieces that have been published in The Bookman during the past two years. My excuse for collecting them is that for the most part they are worth while in themselves, and, as a whole, seem to me to show the present-day literary attitude in America.

For a true anthology of essays one would be obliged to secure the work of English writers such as Chesterton, Lucas and Belloc, American writers such as Agnes Repplier, Samuel Crothers and Gamaliel Bradford. Perhaps some day it will be my good fortune to prepare such a volume; but for the present, I have attempted to give you an informal survey of the way those who write our books and our magazines are thinking to-day. These pieces of prose are not from the pens of members of any single school or group of writers. Personally, I am one of those who believe that such schools or groups do not exist in the United States. At any rate, here are varying shades of opinion, varying methods of writing, varying moods. A Negro discusses the position of his race among American writers; one dramatic critic recounts anecdotes of O. Henry, another, memories of Sarah Bernhardt; Heywood Broun describes the reading of a great prizefighter; Hugh Walpole chides the volatile Mr. Mencken, and Mr. Mencken replies. Charles Henry Meltzer was a dramatic critic in New York many years ago, Alexander Woollcott now serves in that capacity. Both of them are represented here. Arthur Bostwick is a famous librarian, William McFee, a ship’s engineer who writes novels. William Lyon Phelps is a critic of enthusiasm and of experience. Burton Rascoe is a young man with a biting tongue and a fresh standard. Here they speak for themselves. My attempt has been, as you see, to present contrasts, and to present them without prejudice.

The only Englishmen included here are William McFee and Hugh Walpole, both of whom have such definite connections with America that they seem a part of our literary scene. McFee has made New York his home port for many years and is about to become a naturalized American. Walpole went to school in New York when he was a boy, has lectured here with success, and, to my mind, understands and seems to like the United States, better than any other of the procession of visiting English novelists.

To understand current literary tendencies in America would be a Herculean task. To sympathize with such tendencies after they were understood would, I fancy, require the ability of a chameleon. To study them, however, is fascinating. As a public we are yet so young and so impressionable that we veer to the right and to the left with the slightest inflation of our sails; and following in the footsteps of Mr. Barnum, our mentors are peculiarly adept at furnishing the wind of publicity. This keeps our literary study clubs, our college curricula and our literary magazines and newspaper supplements in such a state of flux that analysis of a year’s opinions issuing from the same fountain-head would be sure to uncover mirth-provoking inconstancy. In spite of all this, we are gradually developing a national taste in reading and a national interest in things cultural. I want you to note the curious and constant use by my contributors of the name of Harold Bell Wright as a symbol of American taste.

I hope that in the following pages you will find a key which is not too heavy, which will unlock one door, at least, of the fortress of American opinion. As in “The Bookman Anthology of Verse” I hoped that you would read casually at first, here, too, I should be pleased if you would skim the volume rapidly, gaining from it, if my attempt has been successful, an informal, gay and yet real panorama of the world of letters in America to-day. When you return to your individual favorites, when you look, perhaps, further than this volume for more of their work, I hope you will find that writing in America, while it is formative, often crude, and occasionally ill-mannered, is gaining a vitality of expression and viewpoint which the literature of more polished countries is losing, or has lost.

J. F.

New York City, September, 1923.