TO THE GOLDEN SHORE. THE LIFE OF ADONIRAM JUDSON.

By CourtneyAnderson '31. Boston: Little, Brown andCompany. 530 pp. $6.00.

When Adoniram Judson sailed from Boston for the Far East with his first wife in 1812, only a handful of people saw him off. When he returned from Burma in 1845, crowds of people greeted him at the wharf. The life of his wife, who had died in Burma, had been read by hundreds of thousands; he himself "had been the subject of thousands of sermons ... thousands had named their children for him." (One such namesake, incidentally, was the father of President-Emeritus Hopkins.) His ambition "to be the first American foreign missionary; the first missionary to Burma; the first translator of the Bible into Burmese" had been achieved, but at what a cost: the death of his first devoted wife and of the second, no less devoted, who died on the way home; the death of several of his children; his imprisonment for two years in Burma; the ravages of disease, which eventually ended his own life in Burma at 62. But he had seen the beginnings of Christianity in Burma. He had translated the Bible into Burmese, from the original Hebrew and Greek, and had completed an English-Burmese dictionary. He had also set up a printing press in Rangoon. The recent publication of the first volume of a Burmese encyclopedia, with the help of twentieth century Americans, may be directly traced to these pioneering efforts.

Courtney Anderson brings to this absorbing story thorough scholarship, imagination, and insight. From it emerge living portraits of Judson, his associates, Burmese potentates and humble converts, and Judson's three remarkable wives; sharply etched impressions of early nineteenth century New England; colorful pictures of Rangoon, Ava, Moulmein, and the Burmese jungle: in fact, he has shown "the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." The style fits the subject admirably: terse and nervous in dramatic passages; lucid and enlightening when dealing with out-dated theological controversies; flexible and imaginative when describing the intellectual and emotional life of a highly introspective and subtle man.

To the Golden Shore is an engrossing book and a memorable achievement.