The Green-Room

“Here’s a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal”

The first number of The Virginia Quarterly lie-view was dated April, 1925. With the present issue the Quarterly begins its sixth year. In this interim the work of over two hundred authors—sometimes writers of international fame, sometimes young authors not before published—has appeared in its pages; it has gained readers in every state in the Union and won a recognition in other countries.

In its first “Green-Room” it announced itself as a national journal of independent thought in the fields of society, politics, and literature: and as a part of its programme announced: “The Quarterly will in a measure be peculiarly concerned with themes growing out of the life and problems of the people of the South and especially cordial to the work of able Southern writers, yet it will in no sense be a magazine of a section. It will welcome interesting themes and brilliant contributors wherever it can find them and the freshening impact of writers from other lands. It will aim to be liberal but reasonable; open to the discussions of all topics and to all stimulating and engaging points of view.” How far these promises are being kept after five years, we invite our readers to decide.

Alabama has been especially conspicuous among Southern states for its industrial development. Perhaps it is through the individual state that the modifications that are so vitally taking place in Southern life can be studied. In a paper accompanying‘ “Alabama Goes Industrial,” its author wrote, “Alabama has not been so artless as other Southern states in issuing blanket calls for outsiders to come in and freely possess their wealth of men and materials. It has not so blatantly advertised native incompetency: nor has it begged so publicly for outside ownership and domination.” Clarence E. Cason is professor of journalism at the University of Alabama. Before returning to Alabama, Mr. Cason taught for several years at Wisconsin and Minnesota. He has done newspaper work in Washington, New York, and Louisville and has contributed to the Virginia Quarterly.

Luc Durtain has traveled extensively in America. Andre Maurois says of him: “Durtain is, among all the writers of my generation, the one who is making the greatest progress. He has published some books about America: ‘Quarantidme Etagc’ ‘Hollywood De’frappe’/ violent books that may, perhaps, appear inexact to many Americans, but the vigorous style, the force of the imagery are incontestable, and besides, the pictures are not more satirical than those of Sinclair Lewis. Durtain himself is one of the most intelligent men that one can meet.” The translation of “Europe Sees America” is by James Butler.

The South has been for some years the home of Howard Mumeord Jones who before he became professor of English at the University of North Carolina and earlier at Chicago, had been a teacher at the University of Texas. He has written plays, poetry, and criticism. He is the author of “America and French Culture.” As editor of the syndicated column, “The Literary Lantern,” he became especially interested in writers in the South.

The publication of “Humanism and America” under the editorship of Norman Foerster has interested many persons in the question answered in “What is Humanism?” Robert Shaeer, a Princeton man born in Maryland, is professor of literature in the University of Cincinnati. Lie is also a contributor to the book which sets forth the views of Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, and others of the “new humanists.” He is author of “Progress and Science,” “Christianity and Naturalism,” “From Beowulf to Thomas Hardy,” and other books in American and English literature.

Walter de la Make, acknowledged master in three fields—poetry, short story, and the novel—has published before in The Virginia Quarterly Review. Readers of his “Willows” in the October Quarterly will recognize a similar subtlety of manner in “The Picnic.”

Though he has lived in Virginia and New York, Lawrence Lee is a native of Alabama as his poem in this issue might suggest. Mr. Lee’s unpublished narrative poem based upon Jack Jouett’s famous ride is to be issued in late spring in a limited and illustrated edition by the Slide Mountain Press, printers of certain rare items of Stephens and of Robinson. The title of the poem is “A Hawk from Cuckoo Tavern.”

Frances M. Frost lives at South Burlington, Vermont. Her first book, “Hemlock Wall,” was published last fall in the Yale series of Younger Poets.

Born in Maine, Wilbert Snow has been well known as a poet since the publication in 1923 of “Maine Coast.” His latest volume of verse is “The Inner Harbor.”

“The Soviets in World Affairs” will be the title of a new book by, Louis Fischer to be published in May. When Mr. Fischer’s article “Soviet Russia and the Powers” appeared in this review in July, 1925, he was “an American correspondent in Moscow.” Since then he has visited America and England and is now again in Russia for another six months. Readers of the newspapers during the war period will recall how familiar the name of Enver Pasha then was and will be interested in the story, now at last told with authenticity, of how he came to his death.

Charles Morrow Wilson is a son of the Arkansas hill country from which he gathered the material for his article on mountain speech from “our contemporary ancestors, so to speak.” After his graduation from the University of Arkansas in 1926, he returned to his native town of Fayette-ville where he has spent his time studying the people and their speech and writing for newspapers and magazines.

In what its author has called “the new mode of bi-bio-graphical” essay, of Bulwer and Disraeli, Lionel Stevenson in “Stepfathers of Viotorianism” has shown the part of these two friends in inaugurating a new era in politics and in literature. Mr. Stevenson, a native of Scotland, lives in Berkeley, where he is connected with the University of California. Among his publications is “Appraisals of Canadian Literature.”

As author of “Woodrow Wilson and His Work” and joint editor of “The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson,” William B. Dodd is especially interested in the events of the past quarter of a century in United States history. Frederick P. Mayer of the University of Pittsburg has been a contributor to the Virginia Quarterly since its beginning. Graham Alms is a business man and writer of Chicago, especially interested in politics and international affairs. His articles have appeared frequently in this magazine. As a poet himself and a contributing editor of The Nation, Mark Van Doren has been especially observant of the contemporary tendencies in poetry. He is the author of several volumes of poetry and of critical studies and editor of “An Anthology of World Poetry.” Thomas H. Dickinson, whose “Dawn of a New Dramatic Era” in the July, 1929, Virginia Quarterly was widely acknowledged as one of the “ten best magazine articles of the month,” is well known as a writer on the American theatre.

For fourteen years Harry Clemons was librarian at the University of Nanking, China. Earlier he was connected with the English department of Princeton. He is now the librarian of the University of Virginia. The reviewer of “Dime Dreadfuls” is himself the son of the author of one of the most famous of dime novels, “Seth Jones.” Colonel W. E. Ellis writes from his home in Summerville, S. C. where he is engaged in newspaper work. Stringfellow Barr, formerly managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, is now one of its associate editors. Perhaps no contributor to the Virginia Quarterly has appeared oftener in its pages than Edward Waoenknecht of the University of Washington. Mr. Wagenknecht’s very successful “The Man Charles Dickens” is reviewed in this issue.

THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

Edited by JAMES SOUTHALL WILSON Advisory Editors

. Edwin A. Alderman  John Calvin Metcalf

F. Stringfellow Bark  Carroll M. Sparrow

The Virginia Quarterly Review is published at the University of Virginia: in April, July, October, and January. Subscription rates: $3.00 the year. Canadian, $3.25; Foreign, $3.50. Single copies, 75 cents.

Contributions should be accompanied by postage for return and addressed to The Editor or The Virginia Quarterly Review, University, Virginia. The University of Virginia and the Editors do not assume responsibility for the views expressed by contributors of signed articles.

All letters relative to advertising and other business matters should be sent to

Lambert Davis, Managing Editor

PUBLICATION AND EDITORIAL OFFICE: 1 WEST RANGE UNIVERSITY, VIRGINIA

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