July 18, 1908

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

By L. M. Montgomery

The author's probable intention was to exhibit a unique development in this little asylum waif, but there is no real difference between the girl at the end of the story and the one at the beginning of it. All the other characters in the book are human enough.

February 19, 1911

HOWARDS END

By E. M. Forster

As a social philosopher, evidently, Mr. Edward M. Forster has not yet arrived at any very positive convictions. He evinces neither power nor inclination to come to grips with any vital human problem.

September 14, 1913

O PIONEERS!

By Willa Sibert Cather

Possibly some might call it a feminist novel, for the two heroines are stronger, cleverer and better balanced than their husbands and brothers -- but we are sure Miss Cather had nothing so inartistic in mind.

June 13, 1920

THE VOYAGE OUT

By Virginia Woolf

This English novel, by an English writer, gives promise in its opening chapters of much entertainment. Later, the reader is disappointed. That the author knows her London in its most interesting aspects there can be no doubt. But aside from a certain cleverness -- which, being all in one key, palls on one after going through a hundred pages of it -- there is little in this offering to make it stand out from the ruck of mediocre novels which make far less literary pretension.

August 9, 1931

HARMONIUM

By Wallace Stevens

Unpleasant as it is to record such a conclusion, the very remarkable work of Wallace Stevens cannot endure. The verses which go to make up the volume ''Harmonium'' are as close to ''pure poetry'' as one could expect to come. And so far as rhythms and vowels and consonants may be substituted for musical notes, the volume is an achievement. But the achievement is not poetry, it is a tour de force, a ''stunt'' in the fantastic and the bizarre. From one end of the book to the other there is not an idea that can vitally affect the mind, there is not a word that can arouse emotion. The volume is a glittering edifice of icicles. Wallace Stevens is a martyr to a lost cause.