i:-OI-2. 'IR KSAC'l I('.\S. 3I 



States and Canada, and are beginning to make headway in 

 England, — always an uncertain field for trans atlantic books. 



Two sisters, the Misses Lizars, of Stratford, Ontario,' 

 brought out a few years a-o a couple of remarkably interest- 

 ing and attractively written books, the first called. " In the 

 iJays of the Canada Company," and the second, " Humours 

 of ''2,7-'''' They are, as their titles imply, contributions to the 

 early history of Ontario, but have none of the dry-as-dust 

 quality of conventional histories. Since the appearance of 

 these two books, the sisters have a.yain collaborated upon a 

 book of fiction, "•' Committed to His Charge," ^ a simple story 

 of village life in Ontario, graphically told, and with not a 

 little quiet humour. The story is something in the manner 

 of Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford." 



Another Canadian book of the same class is "Baldoon," ^ 

 by the Rev LeRoy Hooker, a Canadian clergyman now 

 living in Chicago. This book is perhaps more closely akin 

 to Barriers " Window in Thrums " than to " Cranford," the 

 humour being essentially Scotch in tone. Mr. Hooker also 

 wrote another book, " Enoch the Philistine." 



Miss Joanna E. Wood, of Queenston, Out , is the author 

 of several books of fiction. The first two, " The Untempered 

 Wind," (1894), and "Judith Moore," (1898), are novels of 

 rural life in Ontario. The third, lately published, "A Daugh- 

 ter of Witches" (1900), is a rather clever study of character 

 as found in a New England environment. Miss Wood has 

 completed, a fourth book " Farden Ha !," the scene of which 

 is laid in Scotland, and which promises to be the best she has 

 yet written. 



x\ new type of fiction has lately become popular with 

 Canadian novelists. It aims to bring the life of what we call 

 the "lower animals " sympathetically before human readers. 

 The idea is not an entirely new one, for Kipling, (to cite no 

 earlier examples), introduced it very successfully in his Jungle 



1 Moraiig, Toronto, 1900. 



2 Chicago, 1899 ; Toronto, 1900. 



