ISSUE: Spring 1929
“Here’s a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal.”
The two articles in this number of The Virginia Quarterly on the Kellogg Pact represent not a debate but two very different attitudes, the one by a Spaniard, the other by an American. Salvador de Madariaga is a frequent contributor to periodicals in half a dozen countries. For six years he has been Director of Disarmament of the Secretariat of the League of Nations. He was born in Coruna, Spain, and after completing his work at Madrid University was in Paris several years as a student at the Sorbonne. In 1916 lie resigned as Head of Electrical Services of the Northern Railway Company of Spain to devote himself to writing. His books have been published in Spain. France, England, and the United States. Among those in English are “Shelly and Calderon,” “The Genius of Spain,” “Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards.” A new book to appear during the spring (New York: Co ward-McCann). including the material of his article on “The Kellogg Pact,” will be entitled “Disarmament.” Mr. de Madariaga is now a professor at Oxford.
While Graham Aldis defends a naval policy that is under attack in Mr. de Madariaga’s paper, it is fair to say that neither writer has seen the other’s article. Mr. Alois, a Harvard man, is a student of municipal affairs and especially of the business management of our government, as his article in the October, 1927, number of The Virginia Quarterly on “Economy and the National Rudget” indicated. The background of his life is a business office in Chicago.
The study of “Ellen Glasgow” has a subtle interest as a picture of a satirist by a satirist without satire. The author of “Stuffed Peacocks” shows that she can paint admiringly as successfully as she can etch in acid. Emily Clark became known first as editor of The Reviewer of Richmond, Virginia. Her home now is Philadephia.
Stringfellow Barr has been Managing Editor and is now one of the advisory editors of The Virginia Quarterly, and he has frequently written for it. One of the “younger generation,” he joins issue with many of his contemporaries in viewing sympathetically, the old order and its values. Mr. Barr, born a Virginian, and a graduate of the University of Virginia, studied at the University of Ghent, at the Sorbonne and at Balliol College, Oxford.
“Eureka” in Elbert County, Georgia, is the old home-place of Elmira Grogan, who lives now in Savannah. Miss Grogan hopes to restore it before it is swallowed up by “a giant industrial city, beginning just across the river.” Whether or not “The Flatwoods” is reminiscent of “Eureka,” it is one of a series of plantation sketches which will later form one book.
Before he became Professor of Economic History at the University of Toronto, Mr. C. R. Fay was connected with Cambridge University, England. He has been interested in the organization of the consumer in the United States and Canada as well as in England. He is author of “Great Britain, from Adam Smith to the Present Day” (Longmans, 1928).
The translation of Julien Green’s “William Blake, Prophet” is by Stringfellow Barr. Mr. Green, whose home has been Paris always though his parents are Americans and he was a student at the University of Virginia, writes all his works in French. His novels, known in the United States as “Avarice House” and “The Closed Garden,” were sensations in France under the titles “Mont-Cinere” and “Adrienne Mesurat.” “The Pilgrim on the Earth” is being issued in a limited edition of 350 copies (Harpers. $25.00) this spring. Mr. Green’s “Charlotte Bronte and her Sisters” was published in the last issue of this Review.
“Stones for Jacob’s Pillow” is, of course, the record of real experiences. Mary Lee Davis is the wife of John Allen Davis, with whom she travelled in his days of mining engineering in Wyoming, in Colorado, in Alaska. She was in her student years at Wellesley, Radcliffe, and abroad, and lives now in Washington. “Our Passage to Asia” in the July, 1928, Virginia Quarterly was Mrs. Davis’ plea for Alaska.
Edward Wagenknecht, who interprets as a man “Dictionary” Webster, is a familiar writer to our readers. He is a member of the English staff of the University of Washington at Seattle. His “Geraldine Farrar: An Authorized Record of her Career” is appearing this spring in a limited edition of 350 copies. “The Man Charles Dickens. A Victorian Portrait” will be the title of his study in psychography, which Houghton Mifflin Company will publish — the date not yet announced.
The Virginia Quarterly has published the work of all three of the poets before. William Force Stead is a Southerner who is now connected with Worcester College, Oxford. He has lived in England for many years and his books have been published there. Lawrence Lee, engaged in editorial work in New York City, is from Montgomery, Alabama, and like Mr. Stead was a University student in Virginia. Clinton Scollard, with his wife Jessie Rittenhouse, divides his time between Kent, Connecticut, and Winter Park, Florida. He has published widely.
Claude G. Bowers, author of “Jefferson and Hamilton,” is one of the editors of The New York World. Frederick P. Mayer is a member of the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh. Author of many well-known historical works, Dr. Philip Alexander Bruce makes his home at the University of Virginia. Nat Lawrence, Jr., is a member of the English Staff of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Allen W. Porterfield, a writer of experience, is professor at the University of West Virginia. Walter L. Myers, Professor of English in the University of Pittsburgh, is author of “The Later Realism,” a notable study of contemporary novels. John Hyde Preston’s “Aesthetics and Religion,” Virginia Quarterly, October, 1928, was translated into the German, after attracting wide attention in America.
