ISSUE: Spring 1927
“Here’s a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal.”
No section of America is more in the magazine spot-light than the states familiarly called The South. The Virginia Quarterly has published recently several articles on themes growing out of Southern topics: among them “The Democratic Party” by William Cabell Bruce, “A Tilt with Southern Wind-Mills” by Gerald W. Johnson, “The Dilemma of Democracy” by William E. Dodd, “These Things Doth the Lord Hate” and “Those Southern Repudiated Bonds” by J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, “Our Social Revolution” by Sara Haardt, “The Negro and the South” by M. Ashby Jones, “Fleshpots in the South” by Broadus Mitchell, “A Human Episode” by Ed-win A. Alderman, “The Democracy and Al Smith” by Louis I. Jaffe. Eugene Szepesi’s “Migrating Cotton Mills” presents another phase of what the author calls the “greatest economic drama of the century” from that of Broadus Mitchell’s discussion of the industrialization of the South in his “Fleshpots” of a year ago. The author is an efficiency engineer whose work is largely one of adjusting difficulties into which other engineers get themselves. Most of his writing hitherto has been for trade papers. The study of shifting conditions in the world of cotton will form later a chapter in a book which Mr. Szepesi is planning.
Mary Lee Davis has spent eight years in interior Alaska, where her husband, John Allen Davis, was in charge of the United States Bureau of Mines work, stationed in Fairbanks. It was a period in which she could watch “the Territory pass through its difficult transition period, with the war and the coming of the railroad, the depreciation of gold—the passing of the early pioneer type and life”: and gather material for a notable series of articles for Scrib-ner’s, and for “Our Passage to Asia.” Mrs. Davis folJaffe, a graduate of Duke University, is editor of The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Virginia.
John Hyde Phestox, who discusses in this issue the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and in the “Discussion of New Books” three other American poets, is familiar to our readers through his paper on Walter Pater in January, 1927.
“Can England Change?” is the question which Phyllis Bottoms answers in “This England.” Grant Overton has said of Phyllis Bottome, speaking of her novels “The Dark Tower” and “Old Wrine”, she “goes deep into her people; she is not afraid of emotion.” “The Belated Reckoning” (Doran) is Miss Bottome’s new novel. “This England”—the title is from Faulconbridge’s speech in “King John”—is, of course, an English writer’s discussion of her own country addressed to American readers.
It is from another point of view that Professor Raymond Turner of the Johns Hopkins University shows how the British Empire has changed. Mr. Turner wrote the article “Locarno” in the October, 1926, number. His latest book is “The Privy Council of England” (Hopkins Press).
The theme of Ernest Boyd’s paper suggests the need of a new kind of literary ambassador to the country of William Shakespeare. Mr. Boyd’s study of de Maupassant is reviewed in this number of the Quarterly. Ernest Boyd himself has been one of the ablest interpreters of continental literature.to American readers.
In the poetry of this issue, the deliberate attempt has been made to present diverse representatives of contemporary American verse different from most of the poetry hitherto used by the Virginia Quarterly. Mildred Whitney Stillman is now in New York City. John Bryan lives in Asheville, X. C. His volume of verse, “The Spider in
