Book and Article Notices

Volume I of this marathon achievement was reviewed in Transactions, volume 24, part I. This is not a review, since a review is planned for the near future. It is more in the nature of a warning. The volumes have proved extremely difficult to get hold of, so potential readers, or the libraries they use, should be warned that getting them may be a lengthy and aggravating process, and since they may not remain in print for long it should be embarked on at once. Those who manage to get sight of the volumes will find everything (except letters) that Branwell wrote which is available in manuscript form today. Here in volume II is the much-cited but little read The Wool is Rising, and also The Life of feild Marshall the Right Honourable Alexander Percy amid much else, while the third volume, from the period when Branwell turned more and more to poetry, has the Horace Odes as well as the article on Bewick that Neufeldt discovered in the Halifax Guardian, and the last, feeble attempt at a novel, And the Weary Are At Rest. When Christine Alexander's last volume is published the Angrian writings will be able to be read chronologically, showing how the one sibling reacted to the other's work, and how each one contributed to the evolving structure of the saga (or soap opera). Robert Barnard