Spring Books

February is reputed a dull month for publishers, but it is a busy month in their offices. In the January Shop-Talk pages something was said about Mr. Lawrence Shaw Mayo’sAmerica of Yesterday, made up from the journals of Governor and Secretary John D. Long, portions of which have been appearing in the Atlantic to the great satisfaction of its readers;Miss Lucy Furman’s Kentucky mountain story, The Quare Women, also happily familiar to Atlantic readers; and Mr. A. Edward Newton’sDr. Johnson: A Play. Even before the spring publication of these books, the Atlantic Monthly Press is planning to issue — before Easter — a new book by Mr. Henry Dwight Sedgwick, author of Marcus Aurelius, published in 1921, and a number of other books that have appeared at intervals since 1896, joining scholarship and charm in a manner none too common in the work of American writers. The new book will be called Pro Vita Monastica. It might have been entitled, with equal truth, ‘ The World Is Too Much With Us,’ for, in an age of gregarious turmoil, it defends the life of the recluse, and calls to mind, at a moment when the reminder is profitable, the example of saints and sages who have tasted the rich fruits of solitude. It cannot be said with candor that the book is expected to drive many readers from cities into deserts; but there are few dwellers in the crowd who do not have their moments of longing for escape. To these — and not these alone — Mr. Sedgwick’s book will make a strong appeal. Its physical production has been committed to the Merrymount Press.