SHORTER NOTICE
A History of Russian Literature. By D. S. Mirsky. Edited and Abridged by Francis J. Whitfield. (Routledge. 2 p.) THE two volumes of D. S. Mirsky's History of Russian Literature. the first extending in period to the year 1881, the other covering the subsequent years down to 1925, were originally published here in 1925 and 1927, and since then have been recognised as the most comprehensive and best informed work of their kind in English available to the student. Mirsky returned to Russia in the early 'thirties, was active on the " critical front " for a brief period and then mysteriously dropped out of sight and has not been heard of again. His work was well worth reprinting—though not quite for the reasons given in the " blurb " on the jacket of this book, which misses the essential point that Mirsky's critical judgements evidence Russian rather than English standards of value and which mistakenly refers to him as " a great stylist." Unfortunately, this " abridged " version, conscientious though it is, leaves one with too many grounds for complaint and regret. There was a good case for correcting the perspective of Mirsky's closing sixty or seventy pages ; but the drastic cutting down all through the work of both biographical and historical detail, the severe reduction in quotations and the general process of carving little bits out of the original paragraphs, by which some seven hundred pages of text have been reduced to five hundred, with an additional dozen by way of postscript,' can only be considered unfortunate.
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