Chapter III: Translations

THE HORSE-STEALERS AND OTHER STORIES, and THE SCHOOLMISTRESS AND OTHER STORIES, by _Anton Chekhov_ translated from the Russian by _Constance Garnett_ (The Macmillan Company). Mrs. Garnett's excellent edition of Chekhov is rapidly drawing to a conclusion. In the two volumes now under consideration we find the greater part of Chekhov's very short sketches, notably many of the humorous pieces which he wrote in early life. These are most often brief renderings of a mood, or quiet ironic contrasts which set forth facts without drawing any moral or pointing to any intellectual conclusion.

LITTLE PIERRE, and THE SEVEN WIVES OF BLUEBEARD, by _Anatole France_; edited by _Frederic Chapman_, _James Lewis May_, and _Bernard Miall_. (John Lane). The first of these volumes presents another instalment of the author's autobiography in the form of a series of delicately rendered pictures portrayed with quiet deftness and a laughing irony which is half sad. In "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" he has retold four legends and endowed them with a philosophic content of smiling ironic doubt which accepts life as we find it and preaches a gentle disillusioned epicureanism. Both volumes are faultlessly translated.

PEOPLE, by _Pierre Hamp_; translated by _James Whitall_ (Harcourt, Brace, and Company). Among the poets and prose writers who have emerged in France during the past ten years and formulated a new social and artistic philosophy, Pierre Hamp is by no means the least important figure. He has already published about a dozen volumes of mingled fiction and economic comment which form a somewhat detailed history of the French workingman in his social and industrial relations, but "People" is the first volume which has yet been translated into English. His attitude as revealed in these stories is full of indignant pity, and he gives us a series of sharply etched portraits, many of which will not be forgotten readily. He does not conceal his propagandist tendencies, but they limit him as an artist less in these stories than in his other books. Mr. Whitall's translation is excellent, and conveys the author's rugged style convincingly.

LITTLE RUSSIAN MASTERPIECES in Four Volumes, chosen and translated from the Russian by _Zénaïde A. Ragozin_ (G.P. Putnam's Sons). This collection is valuable as a supplement to existing anthologies because it wisely leaves for other editors the most familiar stories and concentrates on introducing less known writers to the English-speaking public. The editor has broadened her scheme in order to include Polish authors. Among the less familiar figures who are here introduced, I may mention Lesskof, Mamin-Sibiriàk, and Slutchefsky. I can cordially recommend this admirable series.

THE TWO FRIENDS AND OTHER STORIES, by _Ivan Turgenev_; translated from the Russian by _Constance Garnett_ (The Macmillan Company). Mrs. Garnett, to whom we are ever grateful, has surprised us delightfully by offering us some hitherto untranslated novelettes by Turgenev which seem to me to rank among his masterpieces. In each of them he has compressed a whole life cycle into a brief series of significant incidents and made them the microcosm of a larger human world. This is one of the most important volumes of the year.

VOLUMES OF SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES

OCTOBER, 1920, TO SEPTEMBER, 1921: AN INDEX

NOTE. _An asterisk before a title indicates distinction. This list includes single short stories, and collections of short stories. Volumes announced for publication in the autumn of 1921 are listed here, although in some cases they had not yet appeared at the time this book went to press._