The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 45, July 1941 - April, 1942 Page: 225
409 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
1793) became little more than formulas of seduction, suicide,
and sensibility. Only a little sweetening from such favorite
sources as home, children, religion, and temperance, and a few
judicious dashes of purple mists and summer arbors were
needed to bring the dish to a flavor exactly suited to the
American taste.
The group of master-sentimentalists working in America for
forty years immediately preceding the Civil War found the
form perfected, ready for their use. Mr. Brown analyzes with
sympathy and insight-and this is certainly the best portion
of his book-such masterpieces of sentimentalism as Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin and Arthur's Ten Nights in a Bar-room.
The American public was apparently able, and even anxious,
to consume as much as the Mary J. Holmeses, the E. D. E. N.
Southworths, and Augusta Evanses could commit to paper.
On the whole, the book is a model of thoroughness within
the narrow limits set for it: the author has adequately traced
the rise of the sentimental novel, he has analyzed its elements
and its methods and its evils, and he has treated, with satisfy-
ing critical acumen, a few of the finest specimens that senti-
mentalism could produce. Through it all he has been most gen-
erous in citing examples, and he has quite consistently related
the literary fashion to social trends, creeds, and movements.
Yet in a broad sense the work is incomplete. Certainly our
chief interest in the heyday of the sentimental novel lies in its
present significance. How much has the type influenced our
own fiction? Have the 1840 elements gone into the making of
the 1940 novels? Perhaps Mr. Brown is planning a companion
volume in which he will trace sentimentalism and its effects
through the era that produced Gone With the Wind and Grapes
of Wrath.
PHILIP GRAHAM.
The University of Texas.
The Extradition of Nationals. By Robert W. Rafuse.
Urbana, Ill.: The University of Illinois Press, 1939. Pp. 163. $1.50.
The practice of surrendering fugitives from justice to foreign
countries or nations has in the United States always been based
upon treaties. While the Jay Treaty with England, which was
concluded in 1794 and expired in 1807, provided for extradition225
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 45, July 1941 - April, 1942, periodical, 1942; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146053/m1/239/?rotate=270: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.