Chapter 9

. Complete works are best procured in the Northland Edition.

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A convenient size and a beautiful binding are more than desiderata. Who, wishing Bram Stoker’s grim masterpiece, _Dracula_, would not now prefer a new copy in the handy leather of the Lambskin Library? If one is out to acquire a copy of W. Somerset Maugham’s _The Moon and Sixpence_, will he not choose it in its plum-coloured leather and gilt top of the Murray Hill Library? If I go forth to buy _Pride and Prejudice_, I am as certain as anything to ask for it from the volumes of the Modern Student’s Library, because this will give me William Dean Howells’s introduction to the novel.

There is a further advantage of these collections in that they give ready and inexpensive access to exceptional books that are otherwise out of print. I might have excessive trouble, for example, to get hold of _Dracula_ elsewhere. Yet the commonest advantage of such sets is probably as a guide in reading. A publisher does not put a book into his Lambskin Library, or his Murray Hill Library, or his Modern Student’s Library unless the book is one of proved worth and established permanence and continuing popularity. The Library, therefore, offers a convenient and trustworthy solution to those who, among books not freshly published, are unable to see the trees for the forest. A word about these collections is in order.

The Lambskin Library at present comprises nearly fifty volumes, chiefly fiction, although Lawrence F. Abbott’s _Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt_, Helen Keller’s _The Story of My Life_, Booker T. Washington’s _Up From Slavery_ and Franklin’s _Autobiography_ lay a massive foundation for biographies. Conrad, Frank Norris, Selma Lagerlöf, O. Henry, Dumas, Scott, Tarkington, Edna Ferber, Ellen Glasgow, Zola and Rider Haggard are some of the authors represented. Many of the books have interesting prefatory notes and among the contributors of these are William Lyon Phelps, Christopher Morley, William Allen White, John Macy and William Dean Howells.

The Modern Student’s Library is ultimately to include as many as possible of the books one would wish to read in a comprehensive survey of English and American literature. Both the general reader and the student have been held in mind; the books represent a sane departure from the heavily annotated texts of a few years ago. The books have been edited, and introductions to them have been provided by such authorities as William Dean Howells, Stuart P. Sherman, William Lyon Phelps and Carl Van Doren. Bacon’s _Essays_, Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_, Browning, Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_, Emerson’s _Essays_, Hardy’s _The Return of the Native_, Hawthorne’s _The Scarlet Letter_, Meredith, Ruskin, Scott, Stevenson, Thackeray, Thoreau and Whitman are among those already included.

The Murray Hill Library, commencing with modern fiction, will probably enlarge its scope to include some of the best modern non-fiction. Its very handsome binding now covers twelve books, picked works by Arnold Bennett, Somerset Maugham, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Irvin S. Cobb, Walpole, G. A. Birmingham, John Buchan, Stephen McKenna, Swinnerton and Richard Dehan.

Of an entirely different character but not less valuable are the very large volumes of the Nature Library--those volumes by Neltje Blanchan, Julia Ellen Rogers, Nina L. Marshall and others called (for the most part) _The Butterfly Book_, _The Shell Book_, _The Tree Book_, and so on. Fairly expensive books, these, but cheap at any price with their many and wonderful colour plates and photographs from life. In their outdoor field they are not to be surpassed.

iv

Books of a biographical character we have considered already (