May Days: An Anthology of Verse from "Masses-Liberator" by Genevieve TaggardThe Sewanee Review, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Apr., 1926), p. 253Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27533995 .

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Reviezvs in Brief 253

ography. By an adroit juxtaposition of paraphrases from the

famous Pepys Diary, interspersed with clear-headed comments,

the author amuses us at the contradictions on which reputable careers are erected, at the same time that he brings close to our

imaginations a notorious time in English history. It is perhaps about as clever a book as could be produced from a deliber

ately adopted, and emphatically sophisticated ironic vantage

point. And it richly ministers to the craving for the unex

purgated without at all making scared excursions into adultery seem admirable. If no one would think more highly of

humanity for reading it, no one either would be abetted in

the still common effort to give dignity to mankind by subter

fuges.

May Days : An Anthology of Verse from Masses-Liberator. Ed

ited by Genevi?ve Taggard. New York : Boni & Liveright. 1926.

Because it is not an anthology of the "best" poems chosen for

excellence alone the book has character, holding unusual inter

est for the student of our social, political and literary life in

1912-24. Opinions may differ about the value of-these col

lected poems, but none can miss their sincerity, passion, anger,

pity. The anthology has aimed to preserve "the flavor of

those days" by admitting light verse, propaganda, as well as

pieces of high merit. The work stands as a product of a dec

cade, as a challenge to our social complacence and passivity; it represents

an attitude, true, but no vain gesture.

Catherine the Great. By Katherine Anthony. New York : A. A.

Knopf. 1925.

This is the open season. Everybody is writing a "life/*

The game is on. Given the Freudian formula, the hunter

will bring down any game, large or small. Here's Catherine

the Great, a murderess, a tyrant, playing with liberal ideas and

giving away estates, money and serfs by the thousands to her

favorites. But, according to revelations of the new psychology in the hands of merry faddists, Catherine is a case of incomplete emotional contact between daughter and father, the father

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