The publication by I. I. Glivenko of Dostoevski's notebooks, in part in 1924 and in full in 1931, and the consequent re-evaluation of his novels have disposed rather conclusively of the opinion, long held and still occasionally repeated, that Dostoevski, though prophet, philosopher, and psychologist, was not a craftsman; that under the pressure of debts, bad economic habits, and unscrupulous publishers—all true conditions—he patched his novels together as best he could—all untrue.

Apart from the fact that Henry James may not have wished to create such a black and white situation—the innocent American lamb thrown to the continental wolves of Paris—in his novel The American it is possible that the author himself may have expected a less simple interpretation of his novel than that which such scholars and critics as Joseph W. Beach, Constance Rourke, and even F. O. Mathiessen have afforded it. To accept the popular interpretation of the work as a rather transparent story of the victimization of a “good na-tured” American by a Borgia-like Parisian family seems to involve an oversight of much explicit and implicit information in the novel, which suggests that Mrs. Bread, the true mother of Claire de Cintre, was a blackmailer claiming both Newman and the Marquise de Bellegarde as victims; that Newman, by dint of his characteristic American naïveté and his opacity as a judge of character, was completely “taken in” by her ruse; and that Claire's refusal to accept Newman in marriage came as a direct result of her having been informed by the Bellegardes of her true parents—the old Marquis and his “meanest of mistresses,” Catherine Bread.

In 1892, at the age of thirty-six, Bernard Shaw was a notorious socialist and a bachelor, living with his musical mother and sister in London. He had begun paying his way seven years before as a critic of art; now he assayed music; soon, in 1894, it was to be weekly evaluation of the drama. Four of his six novels—five of them written while his mother supported him—had appeared obscurely and unprofitably. In 1891 a young Dutch friend and fellow critic, Jacob T. Grein, had produced Ibsen's Ghosts to inaugurate the new Independent Theatre in support of Shaw's almost solitary campaign for the New Drama. Grein sought but could not at first find an adequate English play in the new vein. “This was not to be endured,” Shaw later recalled. “I had rashly taken up the case, and rather than let it collapse, I manufactured the evidence.” He had embarked upon Widowers' Houses in 1885 only to lay it aside uncompleted; he now finished it, and Grein produced it on 9 December 1892 at the Royalty Theatre, on quite unfashionable Dean Street in Soho. It was Shaw's first appearance on any stage.

When William Dean Howells was preparing the Library edition of his works in 1909, he gathered together four of the stories in which the March family had appeared and laid them aside with the hope of publishing them in one volume. In his preface to this collection, which was never in fact published, Howells thanked Isabel and Basil March for the part they had played in nine of his stories. He also supplied the reader with a suggestion as to how he dealt with the problem of actuality and reality in the novel, which it is the purpose of this paper to explore.

In the landscape of Edith Wharton's life the figure of Henry James is of almost too-distracting importance. He was the greatest man she knew. James himself had many friends and acquaintances such as Howells and Stevenson who stood equal beside him—he moved accustomedly among his peers from youth to old age—tout Edith Wharton had few intimates who were her creative equals, and none who towered into that eminence where James stood. Consequently, no discussion of her work can avoid contemplating the effect of his example and association; the danger, really, is that we will assume more effect than is there.

La excelencia de la poesía de Juan Ramón Jiménez ha restado importancia al estudio aislado de su prosa, que siempre se considera en términos de su poesía. Esta tendencia está justificada. Los modernistas españoles elevaron la prosa a las alturas del verso dotándola de una gran emoción lírica y obras como Platero y yo se conocen como “poemas en prosa,” que es otro modo de decir “poesía.” Entre lo mejor del verso y la prosa de Jiménez hay la misma proporción, aún cuando lo mejor de su verso es tan desnudo y su prosa mejor es tan vestida. Esta paradójica relación se aprecia mejor separando lo poético de lo prosaico. Según el concepto clásico, la poesía es la expresión artística de la belleza por medio de la palabra sujeta a la medida y cadencia de que resulta el verso. Las conferencias y aforismos que sirvieron al poeta para expresar sus ideas sobre vida y poesía en lenguaje corriente son prosa prosaica y también lo son las narraciones y la crítica, que de por sí no son expresión de la belleza, aunque estén bellamente escritas.

We Venture to reaffirm the policy which has guided the selection of articles during the past decade, namely, that PMLA should reflect the most distinguished American scholarship in the modern languages and literatures. It is not a place for beginners to try their wings, unless those wings are used for sure and significant flight; and it is not a place for established scholars to publish their incidental writings, unless those writings compare in excellence and value with those of younger men. As the official Publications of the Modern Language Association of America PMLA should publish to the learned world the most important work of members of the Association.