Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/103

 128. II. JULY 29, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

97

" The Man with the Hoe ' was written in San Jose :

"Its conception first came to me," its author last year informed an interviewer, " in Placerville, El Dorado county. I had seen the painting by Millet once in San Francisco, then one day while in the mining town I saw something in the attitude of a man laoouring on a hill. The setting, the lights and colours preceding the coming of evening enveloped him, his great aloneness in all that sublimity of earth all this helped to inspire the poetic germ. It was not until 1 came to San Jps long after," he concluded, " that I got to the point of developing the idea."

Besides his best-known poem more highly appraised in America than in this country which has several times been reprinted, Markham is the author of ' Lincoln, and Other Poems.' ' California the Wonderful,' Happiness,' issued last year, while two new volumes ' New Light on the Old Riddle ' and 'The Poetry of Jesus' are expected to be ready soon. JOHN GRIGOR.
 * Children in Bondage,' and ' The Shoes of

18 Crofton Road, Camberwell.

This poem is by Edwin Markham, and made a sensation some sixteen or seventeen years ago. He is an American, and I was introduced to him in New York in 1900.

J. M. BULLOCH.

This poem, written by Edwin Markham, was first published in book-form in July, 1899, in the following volume : ' The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems,' pp. 134, Doubleday & McClure Co., London ; New York printed, 1899, 8vo, 4. fid. net. A copy of the first edition is in the British Museum, but the book is still in print, the English publishers being Messrs. Gay & Hancock. In 1900 an edition illustrated by Howard Pyle was published in New York at 10s. Gd.

The author was born in Oregon City on April 23, 1852, and spent his boyhood on a ranch in Central California herding cattle and sheep, and later graduated from the California State Normal School at San Jose and from Santa Rosa College, He studied law, but did not practise ; subse- quently took up educational work, and was superintendent arid head master of the Observation School of the University of California in Oakland. He was for some time an occasional contributor to the leading American magazines, but first gained wide reputation through the publication of his poem ' The Man with the Hoe,"* suggested to him by Millet's picture of the same name. The poem first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. It had a great influence, and

caused much discussion, and was intended by the atithor not merely as a picture of the peasant, but as "a symbol of the toiler brutalized through long ages of industrial oppression." His publications include ' Lin- coln, and Other Poems' (1901), and 'Field Folk,' interpretations of Millet (1901).

ARCHIBALD SPARKE.

' NORTH ANGER ABBEY ' : " HORRID " ROMANCES (12 S. ii. 9, 56). I did not notice the earlier correspondence on this topic, or I should have written sooner. One of the books in question, ' The Necromancer,' I believe can be identified with a, book I have in my possession, the full title of which runs :

"The Necromancer: or the Tale of the Black Forest : Founded on Facts : Translated from the German of Lawrence Flammenberg, by Peter Teuthold. In two volumes. London : Printed for William Lane, at the Minerva-Press, Leadenhall- Street. MECCXCIV."

At the end of vol. i. there is a publisher's announcement of a new novel by Mrs. Parsons, ' Ellen and Julia.' About this period the lady probably had a vogue.

B. TERRILL. 21 Brynymor Crescent, Swansea.

MR. M. H. DODDS will be interested to know that, thanks to his useful summary and the previous information given in ' N. & Q.,' I have been able to find in the British Museum copies of ' The Castle of Wolfenbach,' in an edition of 1835 (press- mark 012611 de. 8) ; ' The Mysterious Warning,' 4 vols., published by W. Lane, 1796 (1153 f. 32); Regina Maria Roche's ' Clermont,' 4 vols., published by W. Lane, 1798 (1152 h. 1) ; and ' The Midnight Bell,' second edition, 1825 (not 1824), 3 vols., published by A. K. Newman & Co. (1154 g. 10).

With regard to ' The Midnight Bell,' this is undoubtedly the production of Francis Lathom. On the title-page of the second edition, ' The Midnight Bell, a German Story, Founded on Incidents in Real Life,' the romance is definitely stated to be by " Francis Lathom, author of ' The Mysterious Freebooter ' : ' The Unknown ' : ' Polish Bandit,' " and of some ten more of his many acknowledged works. The attribution of ' The Midnight Bell ' to George Walker is only to be found in Watt (whence it was probably derived for the ' Dictionary of National Biography ' ), and is certainly erroneous.

Mr. R. Farquharson Sharp, whom I have to thank for his kind assistance in the matter, has just traced in Watt, under the name