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Mrs Humphry Ward was born in 1851 at Hobart in Tasmania, eldest daughter of Thomas Arnold, second son of Dr Arnold of Rugby, who, having resigned his Tasmanian inspectorship of schools on becoming a Roman Catholic, was by Dr Newman appointed Professor of English Literature in a Catholic college at Dublin. Mary Augusta Arnold was already known as a scholarly and accomplished writer when in 1872 she married Thomas Humphry Ward, editor of The English Poets. She began early to contribute to Macmillan's Magazine, and gave the fruits of her Spanish studies to Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography. A child's story,

MRS HUMPHRY WARD.

From a Photograph by Russell & Sons.

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Milly and Olly (1881), Miss Bretherton (1884), a slight novel, and the translation of Amiel's Journal Intime (1885) prepared the way for the spiritual romance of Robert Elsmere (1888), which became the novel of the season. bodied an attempt to describe the struggle of a soul in its voyage towards newer theistic aspirations after losing the landmarks of the old faith. Profound spiritual insight, broad human sympathy, and strong thinking are manifest throughout; but as a work of art it is marred by diffuseness, didactic persistency of purpose, and a fatal want of mastery over the fundamental secret of the novelist-the power to make her puppets live rather than preach. Its successor, David Grieve (1892), showed all its faults and fewer merits.

Marcella (1894) and Sir George Tressady (1895) are novels of English politics and society with much that is truly felt and movingly represented, yet too didactic withal. Helbeck of Bannisdale (1898) and Eleanor (1900) deal with aspects of modern Catholicism; and Lady Rose's Daughter (1903) is another novel of society, depicting a situation that recalls the relations of Mdlle. de l'Espinasse and Madame du Deffand.

Madame Duclaux, a bilingual authoress, was born at Leamington in 1857, was educated at Brussels, in Italy, and at University College, London, and under her maiden name of Agnes Mary Frances Robinson was well known as an English poetess ere, in 1888, she married Professor James Darmesteter, a learned Parisian, who was professor at the Collége de France (died 1894). In 1901 she married Professor Duclaux, Directorin-Chief of the Pasteur Institute. Her Handful of Honeysuckles showed her a poetess of rare gifts, and the impression was confirmed by her Crowned Hippolytus, a translation from Euripides; The New Arcadia and other Poems; An Italian Garden, a book of songs; Songs, Ballads, and a Garden Play; and Retrospect and other Poems. She has published a novel, Arden, and books on the End of the Middle Ages and on Emily Brontë; in French and English, Lives of Margaret Queen of Navarre and of M. Renan, and a mediæval anthology; and in French, a book on Froissart (in the 'Grands Ecrivains' series), and Grands Ecrivains d'Outremanche (1901).

Michael Field is the pseudonym adopted by two ladies who write poetry in collaboration, and whose names are understood to be Miss Bradley and Miss Cooper. They have produced about a dozen plays in verse, and also three or four volumes of lyrics. Some of the plays, like Callirrhöe (1884) and Brutus Ultor (1887), have classical themes, but the majority are based on passages of English and Scottish history. Such are Fair Rosamund (1884); The Father's Tragedy (1885), dealing with the fate of David, Earl of Rothesay; William Rufus (1886); Canute the Great (1887); and The Tragic Mary (1890), who of course is Mary Queen of Scots. These latter are written after the Elizabethan manner, and by some critics have even been called Shakespearian. Callirrhöe is pretty and ingenious, but not at all Hellenic in tone or quality. The lyrical poems published under the pseudonym as Long Ago (1889). Sight and Song (1892), and Under the Bough (1893) are less ambitious and have more decided charm.

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Alice Meynell, daughter of Mr T. J. Thomp son, and younger sister of Lady Butler (Miss Elizabeth Thompson) the battle-painter, was educated entirely by her father, with whom she lived in England and Italy until her marriage in 1877 with Mr Wilfrid Meynell, who has written much for the reviews, and in 1903 published a Life of

Beaconsfield. Preludes (1875), her first volume of verse, was illustrated by her sister, and was republished with some changes and additions in 1893. It was praised by Ruskin and Rossetti, and contains verse of high quality and finish for so young a poetess as she was when most of its contents were written. For many years afterwards her literary activity was mainly employed in essay-writing in the newspapers and reviews, but in 1897 she edited an Anthology of English Poetry, showing delicate literary discernment. The list of her published works includes The Rhythm of Life (1893), The Colour of Life and The Children (1896), The Spirit of Place (1898), a sympathetic criticism of Ruskin, and a volume of Later Poems (1902).

Mary St Leger Harrison, at the beginning of the twentieth century one of the most conspicuous and powerful of women novelists, is the younger daughter of Charles Kingsley, and as Mary St Leger Kingsley spent her girlhood at Eversley Rectory. She married the rector of Clovelly in that North Devon which was so dear to her father, but became a widow in 1897. Under the penname of 'Lucas Malet' she made her mark in 1882 with Mrs Lorimer, a sketch in black and white, and had a great success in Colonel Enderby's Wife (1885)-both of them, like most of her novels, dealing frankly with the ethical aspects of human life and society. Little Peter and A Counsel of Perfection were succeeded by The Wages of Sin (1891), The Carissima (1896), The Gateless Barrier (1900), and The History of Sir Richard Calmady, a 'strong' rather than pleasant study of an unamiable dwarf and his noble mother (1901). In 1899 Mrs Harrison had become a member of the Roman Catholic communion.

Fiona Macleod is the name borne by the authoress of a remarkable series of Celtic tales, romances, and poems which began to appear in 1894 with Pharais, a Romance of the Isles. Then followed in quick succession The Mountain Lovers and The Sin-Eater (1895), The Washer of the Ford and Green Fire (1896), and The Laughter of Peterkin (1897), most of which were collected in 1897 in a three-volume reprint. Later books are The Dominion of Dreams (1899), The Divine Adventure (1900), and Drostan and Iseult (1902). Fiona Macleod finds her themes in the Celtic myths of early Ireland and Scotland, which in her pages are so effectively treated as to make her one of the chief representatives of that 'Celtic Revival' of which Mr W. B. Yeats is the protagonist. From the Hills of Dream is a collection of lyrics ; Through the Ivory Gates, poems; The Immortal Hour, a drama based on a Celtic legend. In the dedication to Mr Meredith of The Sin-Eater she says: 'The beauty of the world, the pathos of life, the gloom, the fatalism, the spiritual glamour-it is out of these, the spiritual inheritance of the Gael, that I have fashioned these tales.'

James Matthew Barrie was born in 1860 at Kirriemuir, a Forfarshire village to which he has given a popularity it never formerly enjoyed. Educated at first at the village school, he passed to Dumfries Academy and Edinburgh University, taking his M.A. in 1882. After eighteen months' work on the staff of a Nottingham newspaper, he settled in London as a contributor to such weekly journals as the Speaker and the National Observer. His first book, Better Dead (1887), was largely a satire on London life; his second, The Auld Licht Idylls (1888), and its successor and sequel, A Window in Thrums (1889), made him one of the most popular writers of the day. Few recent

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JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE.

From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry.

sketches of Scottish village life show as much keen observation and quaint humour as are to be found in these vignettes of an extinct generation of country weavers. Less successful was Mr Barrie's next venture, The Little Minister, a full-length novel published in Good Words in 1891, which, though clever in description, dialogue, and character-drawing, showed a lack of constructive power on a large design and of skill in the handling of a theme involving serious passion. Other works of fiction from his pen are When a Man's Single (1888); My Lady Nicotine (1899); Sentimental Tommy (1896), with its sequel, Tommy and Grizel (1900); and The Little White Bird (1902). Margaret Ogilvie (1896) is a pathetic picture of the life and death of his mother. His dramatic ventures, including Walker, London (1892), a slight but agreeable farce, in the title-rôle of which Mr J. L. Toole made one of his last successes; The

Professor's Love Story (1895), a charmingly fresh comedy; and a setting of his own novel The Little Minister (1897), which displayed many of the faults of the novel, were wonderfully well received on the stage, and have been followed by The Wedding Guest, a rather melodramatic piece; The Admirable Crichton, a clever fantasy; Quality Street; and the 'delightful joke' Little Mary (1903). There is a book on Barrie and his work by Hammerton (1900).

Be

George Bernard Shaw, novelist and playwright, was born at Dublin in 1856. He had no university education, but in 1876 came to London and there embarked, at first with small success, in a career of journalism and literary work. tween 1880 and 1883 he produced four novels, the best-known of which is Cashel Byron's Profession, with a boxer for hero. In 1883 he became a Socialist agitator, and helped to form the programme of the Fabian Society, editing the essays of the League, to which he had contributed in 1889. Several tracts from his pen were also published by the same adventure, among them The Quintessence of Ibsenism in 1891. In 1892 appeared the first of his clever and eccentric plays, Widowers' Houses, produced by the Independent Theatre Society, and followed by Arms and the Man (1894), Candida, The Man of Honour and The Man of Destiny in 1897, and others in the same erratic vein. A collection of them, under the title of Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, was issued in 1898; Three Plays for Puritans followed in 1900; and Man and Superman (1903) combines comedy with a paradoxical philosophy of life.

John Davidson, son of a minister of the Evangelical Union, was born at Barrhead in Renfrewshire in 1857, and educated at Greenock. After studying for one session at Edinburgh University, he spent some twelve years in desultory employment as chemist's assistant, mercantile clerk, and teacher in various schools at Greenock, Perth, Glasgow, Paisley, and Crieff. In 1890 he went to London as a journalist, and wrote for the newspapers until his verses began to attract attention. Already he had published several dramas-Bruce, a Chronicle Play (1886), after the Elizabethan manner; Smith, a Tragic Farce (1888); and Scaramouch in Naxos (1889). These were followed in 1891 by a volume of poems entitled In a Music Hall, and before the end of the century he had produced seven or eight other volumes of poetry and drama, the most notable of which are Fleet Street Eclogues (1893-95), Ballads and Songs (1894), New Ballads (1896), The Last Ballad (1898), Godfrida, a play, and The Testament of an Empire Builder (1902). His verse is forcible, graceful, and luxuriant; in his treatment of some metropolitan scenes he shows a quite poignant realism; in his dramatic works he is more successful with a theme like that of the story of Ariadne than with the heroic history of a nation's struggle for freedom.

William Watson, son of a Yorkshire farmer, was born at Burley-in-Wharfedale in that county on 2nd August 1858. His father afterwards became a merchant at Liverpool, where the son was brought up. None of our universities can claim the honour of educating him; but from an early age he showed a poetic bent and gift, and in 1880 appeared The Prince's Quest, his first published work, manifesting strongly the influence of William Morris. Neither it, however, nor the Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature, which came out in 1884, attracted much attention; and it was not till the thoughtful and touching verses on 'Wordsworth's Grave,' in the measure of Gray's Elegy and the manner of Matthew Arnold, were issued along with some other short pieces in 1890 that Mr Watson was generally recognised as a poet. In 1892 he produced another pleasing elegy entitled 'Lachrymæ Musarum,' on the death of Tennyson, bringing it out along with several other lyrics, one of which, 'England my Mother,' bears close resemblance to Mr Henley's much more powerful verses to 'England, my England,' published earlier in the same year. The Eloping Angels (1893) is a clever caprice in Byronic ottava rima, and, like the majority of its predecessors, has something of the air of an echo of the great masters. More original and personal are the sonnets on The Year of Shame and The Purple East (1896). although they are deformed by their fierce and almost hysterical denunciation of the 'unspeakable Turk.' The most notable of Mr Watson's other poems are his Father of the Forest (1895) and The Hope of the World (1897), which were collected along with the rest of his verse in 1898; in 1902 he produced one of the many odes on the coronation of King Edward VII., and in 1903 published For England: Poems written in Estrangement. In prose he has written a volume of essays entitled Excursions in Criticism (1893). In 1895 he received a Civil List pension in recognition of his work.

Oscar O'Flahertie Wilde (1856-1900), poet and dramatist, was the younger son of Sir William Wilde, eminent both as surgeon and as antiquary, and of Jane Elgee, a lady who under the nom di guerre of 'Speranza' contributed some inspiring verse to The Spirit of the Nation. He was educated first at Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwards at Magdalen, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize in 1878 by a poem on Ravenna. Here he began that cult of 'æstheticism' for which he quickly became famous both in England and America. This movement, which for a few years took an astonishing hold on the British public, derived its impulse mainly from Wilde, and its influence has been much more than ephemeral. In 1881 appeared a volume of poems, marked by a singular mixture of verbal felicity and affected sentiment. In 1888 Wilde entered on a period of great activity, first as a writer of novels

and stories, and later as a dramatist. In the former kind Dorian Gray (1891) is his chief work, and its success was due, in part at least, to qualities not exclusively literary. The popularity of his plays was more legitimately earned. Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), The Ideal Husband, and The Importance of being Earnest (1895) were all of them successful on the stage, and are admirable specimens of light comedy, abounding in vivacious dialogue and dexterous situations. Wilde's career was abruptly terminated in the height of his dramatic success; and after undergoing two years imprisonment for an odious criminal offence, he was released in 1897, and passed his remaining years in France, where shortly before his death he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) embodies his experiences as a convict. George Moore, novelist, playwright, and art critic, was born in 1857, son of a Mayo landowner and M.P., who, like most of the Young Ireland party, to which he was attached, united literary talent with political activity. Educated at Oscott, Moore early gave proof that his father's taste for letters had descended to him. His earliest venture was in verse. Flowers of Passion appeared in 1878, and Martin Luther, a tragedy, in 1879. Following these efforts, Moore spent several years in the study of art in Paris, where he imbibed views which have coloured all his subsequent work. In 1885 a translation of Zola's Pot-bouille expressly avowed the direction which Moore's artistic and literary sympathies had now taken; but in A Mummer's Wife, a novel published in the previous year, he had indicated his enthusiasm for 'realism' plainly enough. Vain Fortune (1891) and Esther Waters (1894) are in the same vein. His later career has been chiefly associated with what is known as the Celtic Revival, and is somewhat at odds with his earlier tendencies. That his intimate connection with the modern school of art and letters in France should have led him to the conclusion that the English language has ceased to be an apt vehicle for literary purposes, is less surprising than that the disciple of realism should find the elixir of a new literary life in the idealism of the Celtic movement. With Mr Yeats, Mr Martyn, Dr Hyde, and others, he has been a contributor to Ideals in Ireland (1901), and has written The Bending of the Bough for the Irish Literary Theatre. It is perhaps as an art critic that he has most deservedly won distinction; his best work in this kind is to be found in Modern Painting (1898). In 1903 he renounced the Roman Catholic faith, mainly on Celtic-national grounds.

on an Arctic ship, but was writing for Chambers's Journal when still a student, and in 1887 and 1888 attracted notice by A Study in Scarlet and Micah Clarke, which were followed in 1890 by the still more popular White Company; and save that he exercised his medical profession with the troops during part of the war in South Africa, and that he stood in 1900, unsuccessfully, as Unionist candidate for a seat in Edinburgh, he has since 1890 been known as a successful author by profession, especially as the creator of a special type of detective story, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, first published in the Strand Magazine, and in 1891 in book form. Brigadier Gerard, Rodney Stone, and The Hound of the Baskervilles are amongst his most successful stories. He also wrote The Great Boer War (1900) and a short work on The Cause and Conduct of the War, issued to explain and defend the action of Britain against misrepresentation in Europe and America. For his services in this connection he was knighted in 1902. In a straightforward, unaffected, vigorous style he writes stories full of invention, movement, and interest.

Sidney Lee, to whom Britain is largely indebted for the carrying out of the monumental Dictionary of National Biography, was born in London in 1859, studied at the City of London School and Balliol College, Oxford. From the beginning of the Dictionary of National Biography to the twenty-first volume (1883-90) he was assistant-editor; in 1890-91 (vols. xxii.-xxvi.) he was joint-editor with Sir Leslie Stephen; and from 1891 to the conclusion of the work (with the sixtythird volume), besides supplement (3 vols.) and epitome (1891-1903), was sole editor. In 1883 he produced a new edition of Lord Berners's translation of Huon of Bordeaux; which was followed by a recension and continuation of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's autobiography; he wrote on Stratford-on-Avon from the earliest time till Shakespeare's death, and on the first folio Shakespeare; and he has published Lives of Shakespeare and of Queen Victoria, expanded from the articles on them contributed by him to the Dictionary. The article on Shakespeare in this work is from his pen.

Israel Zangwill, born in London in 1864, the son of an immigrant, was successively teacher and journalist; has written essays, poems, and plays; but is best known as author of Children of the Ghetto, Ghetto Tragedies, The King of Schnorrers, Dreamers of the Ghetto, and other stories showing his keen insight into all aspects of Jewish life and his sympathy with his race, as well as his literary skill and power.

Anthony Hope Hawkins, born in 1863, the son of a London head-master and clergyman, was educated at Marlborough and Balliol College, and called to the Bar in 1887. The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) was not his first book, but it was that which made his pen-name of 'Anthony Hope' familiar; He practised medicine on land and I and, compounded of romanticism, satire, modernity,

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the son of a clerk in the Exchequer Office in Edinburgh who possessed a share of the artistic gifts of his famous brother Richard Doyle; born in 1859, he was educated at Stonyhurst and Edinburgh University for a medical career.

and burlesque, has served as a model to many attempts in the same genre. The amusing Dolly Dialogues belong to the same year; and other notable works are Rupert of Hentzau, The King's Mirror, Quisante, Tristram of Blent, and The Intrusions of Peggy.

Rudyard Kipling, journalist, writer of short stories, poet and novelist, was born at Bombay on 30th December 1865. His father, Mr John Lockwood Kipling, C.I.E., is an artist of considerable knowledge and skill; his mother (née Alice Macdonald) has, in conjunction with her daughter, published a volume of poems (Hand

RUDYARD KIPLING.

From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry.

in Hand, 1902) showing no small literary power combined with rare delicacy and refinement of feeling. Mr Rudyard Kipling was educated at the United Services College, Westward Ho, North Devon. Afterwards returning to India, he became a journalist and acted at Allahabad as assistanteditor on the Civil and Military Gazette and the Pioneer, in which were printed the stories which, when collected and republished in book form, first drew the attention of the reading public to his merits. Mr Kipling has travelled in China, Japan, Africa, Australia, and America. It was during his seven years' residence in the United States that he all but succumbed to an attack of pneumonia, which called forth an extraordinary manifestation of sympathy on the part of the American public. After this he returned to England, but he has since then made more than one visit of considerable duration to South Africa. Mr Kipling's publica- |

tions include Departmental Ditties (1886), Plain Tales from the Hills, Soldiers Three, In Black and White, The Story of the Gadsbys, Under the Deodars, The Phantom Rickshaw, Wee Willie Winkie, Life's Handicap, The Light that Failed. The Naulakha (written in collaboration with Wolcott Balestier), Barrack Room Ballads, Many Inventions, The Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book, The Seven Seas, Captains Courageous, The Day's Work, Stalky & Co., From Sea to Sea, Kim, Just So Stories, and The Five Nations, a collection of poems, published in 1903.

Mr Kipling is still a young man with many years of work, it may be hoped, before him. No attempt could therefore in any case be made to fix the place which he will eventually occupy in the literature of his age and country. The task would be made additionally difficult by the curious and almost freakish developments and changes which have marked his literary power during the last eighteen years. He became known originally as a writer of short stories dealing with Indian life, and particularly with the life of the British soldier in India. These showed him to be possessed of a method at once vivid and strong, and of an uncompromising directness of expression somewhat rare amongst the writers of the day. The stories were not less remarkable for the extraordinary keenness of observation displayed by the writer. He may be said (although not a few soldiers might hesitate to concur in this dictum) to have represented the common soldier with a faithful accuracy that left but little to be desired; there, limned to the life, were the Cockney, the Yorkshireman, and the Irishman, three types of the great mass of their fellows who make up the rank and file of the army. Their weaknesses and the peculiar code of morals that is supposed to distinguish the regular soldier from his civilian fellow-countrymen were set down as faithfully as their courage, their fatalistic endurance, their admiration of manliness, and their resourcefulness. The success of Soldiers Three and Plain Tales from the Hills was incontestable, and they were followed by sketches displaying the same graphic power in conjunction with imaginative insight and a vein of tenderness in some of the tales that formed a strange contrast to the somewhat brutal but intentional roughness of other writings by the young author. Less successful was The Light that Failed, Mr Kipling's first attempt at a novel. The same qualities and the same contrast are to be observed in this book as in the collections of shorter stories, but the coarseness outweighs and overpowers the tenderness; and the style of writing which, in spite of its jerkiness and its lack of emotional restraint, carried the writer triumphantly through the few pages of the short story seems to lag and halt when forced into his service for a novel. While the two Jungle Books and Kim must not be forgotten by those who endeavour to estimate Mr Kipling's position, it may safely be said that of late

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