Annals of an Era
The Pioneer Press of Washington, D. C., has recently published a volume of over five hundred pages "Annals of an Era. Percy MacKaye and the MacKaye Family, 1826-1932. A record of biography and history, in commentaries and bibliography. Edited, with an Introduction, by Edwin Osgood Grover, Professor of Books at Rollins College. Comprising records chiefly included in the MacKaye Collection at the Dartmouth College Library. Published under the Auspices of Dartmouth College."
From the preface by Mr. Grover we quote: "This volume began as a conventional bibliography of the works of Percy MacKaye, but by an almost inevitable evolution it has grown into a new type of biography.
It is unique in several ways.
First, it is probably the most complete record of an author's work yet presented in bibliographical form.
Second, it is also the record of the literary, dramatic, artistic, scientific, and cultural contributions of four generations of a single family (involving publication by sixteen members of the group), which has for a century been creatively productive in the development of American culture.
Third, the volume is unique also in that it is an astonishing record of the cultural life of an era as revealed by the manysided pioneering activities and interesting contacts of the four MacKaye generations in fields of art, science, poetry, drama, fiction, acting, philosophy, national organizing, and scholarly research. In this respect the many specific cross-references to Percy MacKaye's monumental work on his father, "Epoch, The Life of Steele MacKaye" are important supplements, as are the data concerning his brother, Professor James MacKaye of Dartmouth.
Fourth, the direct succession of dramatists, through the works of Steele, Percyarid Keith MacKaye, with their uninterrupted continuity of distinguished plays during sixty years (1871-1931), is without precedent in the dramatic literature of any country.
Fifth, as a study in heredity the volume should prove of distinctive value both to science and to humanism, since no similar record is known to exist."
