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THE AMERICAN-SCAN DIN AVIAN REVIEW 
och mdnnishor . Andra samlingen. Albert Bonnier, 1921). It is 
an excellent example of her narrative skill. Her strength lies in her 
ability to animate nature, to conjure up elemental beings and to pene¬ 
trate to the innermost recesses of existence. A spirit of enchantment 
hovers over what she writes, something naive and strongly gripping. 
Th e Gnome at 'l oreby (Tomten paa Toveby) is one of the best stories 
of this collection. It is an account of the intervention of the gnome 
belonging to the gaavd, who saves the old estate which the reckless 
owner has gambled away. But in return, the latter has to forfeit his 
life for neglecting his inheritance. The whole story is permeated by 
an atmosphere of storms and gloomy fall days which seem to spell 
disaster. Perhaps this tale, like a number of others by the same author, 
may be open to criticism on the score that it has too evidently been 
shaped to point a moral. Justice, divine and gentle, rules her world, 
as may be seen in the beautiful Legend of St. Lucia (Lucialegenden). 
Without her husband s knowledge the young mistress of Bortsholm 
Castle on the Vanern has given to the poor and needy the castle’s 
entire winter supply of food and drink. Her husband becomes angrv 
and is about to punish her severely. Whereupon St. Lucia, her patron 
saint, rises from her grave and flies through the air on a ball of fire 
to rescue the young wife and appease her husband. To this day, early 
in the morning of the thirteenth of December, the people of Varmland 
gratefully celebrate in memory of St. Lucia. 
The Eclipse of the Sun (Solformorkelse dagen) contains an 
excellent psychologic study of the people. It is the story of the old 
women in the poverty-stricken parishes of the moorlands, into whose 
joyless lives of toil a chat around the coffee-pot brings a ray of 
sunshine. 
In addition to a number of articles bearing on the late war, the 
final chapters of the book include Selma Lagerlof’s speech upon 
becoming a member of the Swedish Academy, besides a beautiful and 
vaim-hearted tribute to our late Crown Princess. Selma Lagerlof’s 
last collection of short stories can not be rated among her most im¬ 
portant works, but it contains a few veritable gems of true narrative 
art. 
Anna Lenah Elgstrom belongs to the younger generation of 
authois. She has something of Selma Lagerlof’s all-embracing 
sympathy for human suffering and sorrow; while in other respects, in 
temperament and in her conception of life, she is her very opposite. 
Up to the present time Anna Lenah Elgstrom as an author has swung 
between two ojiposite poles, from a mode of writing that is naturalistic 
and even militant in character, to a form of reproduction that is con¬ 
templative and purely objective. At one time she tarries in the filth 
and foul air of the slums, from which she draws material for her touch¬ 
ing descriptions, and next she seeks the fields of legend and history in 
