beauty. In
Sentimental Tommy, Tommy and Grizel, and The Little Minister there is
more of plot and more also of a certain gaiety. The Little White Bird
shows the fancy which comes out more strongly in the incomparable Peter
Pan.
Read from as many of Barrie's books as possible, and then discuss his
work as a playwright. Do his books lend themselves to the stage? Let
those who have seen The Little Minister, The Admirable Crichton, Peter
Pan and Little Mary describe them.
VII--HORATIO GILBERT PARKER
Horatio Gilbert Parker, now Sir Gilbert, is both English and Canadian.
His career has been marked by a great variety of experience, as his
books show. Born in Ontario in 1802, he became a teacher, then a curate,
then an instructor in a deaf and dumb asylum, went to Australia for his
health and there took up journalism and play-writing, returned to Canada
and became a novelist. Later he decided to live in England and went
into Parliament. Many of his earlier novels are of Canadian life. When
Valmond Came to Pontiac, The Seats of the Mighty, and The Right of Way
are among the best of his early books. Later he wrote The Weavers, a
strange mingling of East and West in the story of a Quaker in modern
Egypt. His best recent novel is The Judgment House, having for its theme
English society in the time of the Boer War. His versatility in turning
from one scene to another, and from one type of character to another, is
remarkable. Canada, Egypt, London, and Africa are all familiar ground to
him, and trappers, Indians, Frenchmen of the seventeenth century, and
men and women of to-day in cities are all equally well drawn. His early
style was perhaps too diffuse, but his later stories are briefer and
more direct. Read from The Seats of the Mighty and The Judgment House.
Note his different types in his books and discuss them. Read also from
the scenes in the different countries and see the local color.
VIII--HERBERT G. WELLS
Herbert G. Wells was born in Kent in 1866. He had a scientific training,
and his first book was a text book on biology. Later he became one of
the staff of _The Saturday Review_ and then combined science and
literature in a series of romantic novels: His Time Machine, The Wheels
of Chance and The War of the Worlds are all stories in which his
scientific education was utilized. In 1906 he came to America to study
social conditions and since then has written two books in quite another
vein--Tono Bungay, a sto
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