A writer in the Times Literary Supplement recently remarked that
the English reader's ideas of -Strindberg are limited to two—that he was mad, and that he was a fanatical hater of women. It is appropriate that the issue last year of the first two volumes of a complete English translation of the Swedish dramatist should now be followed by the first serious book on Strindberg in English since the brief biography by MissLind-af- Hageby, published in 1913. In sheer dynamic—or, as some might say, daemonic—power Strindberg can be matched in modern literature only with the great Russians. But his per- sonality was divided against itself ; and if he sometimes recalls the intolerance and dogmatism of a Tolstoy, there are other aspects of him which suggest the self-torturing intro- spection of a Proust. August Strindberg—The Be-devilled -Viking, by' V. J.111eGill (Noel Douglas, 12s. 6d.), reads like a first book ; and the writer has not altogether acquired the technique of sustaining. the reader's interest over the duller *tretches of his hero's career. But his treatment of the prin-
cipal episodes, and notably of Strindberg's first marriage, h full of delicacy and insight ; and he deserves commendation for a valuable and much-needed contribution to the study of Strindberg in English-speaking countries.
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