Foreign News: Essayist-Novelist

In London a first novel entitled The Madonna of the Barricades appeared in quantities on the display racks of booksellers. Semi-literates, attracted by the title, thumbed it just sufficiently to discover that its characters had been set amid the French Revolution of 1848. When they found no stimulating literary garbage interlarded as a bait for popularity, they laid the book aside.

Not so the intelligentsia. On every hand the world of letters was pleasantly stirred to hear that Mr. John St. Loe Strachey,* famed and distinguished essayist, veteran editor of the Spectator, had finally published his first novel, at the age of 65. It was recalled that his daughter, Mrs. Amabell Williams Eltis, also published her first novel, Noah’s Ark, a few months ago.

*Not to be confused with Lytton Strachey, his 45-year-old cousin, likewise a famed essayist, author of Queen Victoria, Eminent Victorians.