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Literature in 1903.

The literary output of the past year in the English-speaking
world was "chiefly distinguished for biographies." Such is
the opinion of the London Academy and Literature (January 9),
and the first place among biographies is given to John Morley's
" Life of Gladstone." Henry James's " W. W. Story" is cited as
" next in importance." The Academy goes on to mention Sidney
Lee's " Life of Queen Victoria," James Bryce's " Studies in Contemporary
Biography," and Justin McCarthy's " Portraits of the
Sixties." The Boston Transcript (December 31) adds Helen
Keller's " Story of My Life," and extends the list:

"' More Letters of Charles Darwin,' the ' Life and Letters of
Max Muller,' the ' Life and Times of George Joachim Goschen,'
the ' Autobiography of Joseph LeConte,' ' Rossetti Papers,' edited
by his brother, ' Memoirs of M. de Blowitz,' the ' Recollections,
Personal and Literary ' of Richard Henry Stoddard, ' Hawthorne
and His Circle ' by his son, offer new and valuable glimpses of
distinguished personalities. In ' My Own Story,' the venerable J.
T. Trowbridge recounts charmingly the most striking events in a
life crowned with popularity and success; the Carlyle controversy
is kept alive with three aggressive volumes--' New Letters and
Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle,' 'My Relations with Carlyle,'
and 'The Nemesis of Froude'; the American Men of Letters
series is advanced with a single volume by Prof. George R.
Carpenter upon Whittier, and in the English Men of Letters are
now included Browning, Crabbe, and Fanny Burney. . . . Other
subjects of the biographer's pen are Maxim Gorky, Bret Harte,
Horace Greeley, William Ellery Channing (by Rev. John W.
Chadwick), Henry Ward Beecher (by Rev. Lyman Abbott), Phillips
Brooks (by Rev. William Lawrence), Benjamin Disraeli,
Thackeray, Poe, Stevenson, and Sir George Grove."

The record of American fiction during the year seems to indicate:
(1) that the novel-reading public can now be less easily imposed
upon than formerly by the mere force of lavish exploitation and
ingenuity of advertising; (2) that the greagtest successes are being
achieved by novelists who have left the beaten track to find their
material; and (3) that American readers are demanding, to a
greater extent than ever before, American novels. The New York
Bookman (January) calls attention to these tendencies, and comments
further:

" Those writers from whom we have come to expect a book or
two every year have, in the main, not disappointed us. Mr. Kipling
published nothing of any length during 1903, which may mean
that we are to have something to look forward to in 1904. From
Mr. George Meredith and Mr. Thomas Hardy, nothing; but this
was not in the nature of a surprise. Mr. Henry James was as
usual industrious, and Mrs. Humphry Ward had the success to
which she has become accustomed with ' Lady Rose's Daughter.'
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle revived his Napoleonic hero, the ' Brigadier
Gerard,' and is now in the full swing of a new series of tales
about Sherlock Holmes. As to American writers, Mr. F. Marion
Crawford brought out his expected novel of Italian life, Mr. James
Lane Allen broke the silence of three years with ' The Mettle of
the Pasture,' Mr. John Fox, Jr., produced in ' The Little Shepherd
of Kingdom Come,' a novel very much out of the ordinary; Mr.
Howells's ' Letters Home' elicited much high appreciation, and in
' The Forest' Mr. Stewart Edward White wrote a book which is
far from being merely one of the books of a year. Mr. Davis's
' The Bar Sinister' and Mr. Tarkington's ' Cherry ' we read and enjoyed
long before they ever appeared in bindings of their own.