LITERARY MASTERPIECES OF THE WESTERN WORLD

Edited by Francis H.Horn '30. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,1953. 255 PP. $3.50.

Dr. Horn, who has recently been elected to the presidency of Pratt Institute, served as Dean of McCoy College in Johns Hopkins University from 1947 to 1951, and in thai position had the direction of the adult education programs carried on by the university.

Under his supervision an experiment was undertaken in lecture courses for adults without college credit and met with great success. The first such program offered consisted of a series of lectures given by distinguished scholars in the humanities at Johns Hopkins, dealing with certain literary masterpieces of the Western World which had been selected for study not only because of their intrinsic literary value but also because of their powerful impact upon the development of western thought.

The essays here presented under Dr. Horn's editorship are those original lectures, revised for publication by the professors who delivered them. They are directed, as were the lectures, not to the specialized scholar but to the general reader who needs the assistance of the specialist for fuller understanding of the masterpieces he is reading.

The essays are extraordinarily stimulating The masterpieces treated are the Bible, the Iliad, the Aeneid, Beowulf, the DivineComedy, Chaucer's works, Rabelais' works, Hamlet, Moliere's comedies, Goethe's Faust,Crime and Punishment, Balzac's works, and Tom Jones.

Each essay is scholarly without being unnecessarily technical, and at the same time is popular in appeal without being over-generalized or over-simplified. The authors are to be congratulated on having struck so skilful a balance.

The range and variety of approach to subject-matter is astonishing and exciting. Am reader who surveys our great western master pieces with this volume of essays as a guide to his deeper appreciation of their meaning and worth must necessarily have his critical horizons widened and his understanding of human experience through the ages clarified. The book merits wide circulation.

The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine is pleased to announce the appointment to its staff, as literary Editor, of Edward C. La them '50, who is Director, Division of Special Collections in the Baker Library. Author of a number of major Alumni Magazine articles, one of which appears this month, he will be in charge of our "Dartmouth Authors" department.