LITERARY AMERICA

by David. E. Scherman'36. Dodd, Mead Company, 1952.176 pp. $5.

I thought enough of this book to pay fivedollars for it, which, in college circles, is highpraise indeed.

After a successful innovation with his Literary England in which he pioneered the useof photographs to interpret literature, David Scherman and his wife Rosemarie Redlich, toured the United States and took photographs which would interpret the spirit of various American writers.

There are 173 photographs, and the letterpress going with them is usually most felicitous and appropriate. I am glad to note thatKenneth Robinson read the galleys and madesuggestions.

The authors represented range from Captain John Smith to Eudora Welty, and include such stalwarts as Cooper, Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Melville, Thoreau, Crane, Tames Whitman, Henry Adams, Willa Cather, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Erskine Caldwell, Dreiser, Ring Lardner, and many others.

I doubt if Robert Frost cares to be reminded of the fact (or legend) that he used to milk his cows at 10 p.m. to avoid rising at dawn. If the "ecology" of this is all right it seems a good idea. Mr. Frost prides himself on being a good farmer, but he is a far greater poet, which the Schermans rightly emphasize. Altogether a very handsome and evocative book.