Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/220

 highest native authorities on the various subjects, and he found, as he playfully boasts, that it was not necessary to alter a single comma! Some critics, it is true, disliked his views and many questioned his prophecies, but the prophecies were soon fulfilled, and on all hands the book was regarded as a valuable contribution to our knowledge of China, Korea and Japan. Another valuable book on the island nation was "Everyday Japan," written by Arthur Lloyd, after twenty-five years' life and work in that country, with an Introduction by Count Hayashi, a former Japanese Ambassador in London. It went into a popular edition in 1911.

The last of the representative books of this section which need be mentioned is "Women of All Nations," by T. Athol Joyce and N. W. Thomas, profusely illustrated from photographs and from colour plates by Norman Hardy. Published in 1908–9, it was one of the first of the more important serials to be launched by the House under the new management.

Turning to biography, the House published in 1879 a "Life of William Ewart Gladstone," by G. Barnett Smith. The author had put plenty of industry into his task, but the book, it must be allowed, lacked spirit. It was, however, sufficiently well received to justify the publishers in issuing an enlarged edition serially a few years later. After Gladstone's death a much more readable biography, edited by Sir Wemyss Reid, was published. It was the work of many pens, but the purely biographical chapters were brightly written by F. W. Hirst, then at the beginning of his career as publicist and economist.

It was not without fitness that the House of Cassell should produce the authorized Life of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, for Shaftesbury was for many years a sympathetic observer of its operations. The book, in three large volumes, was written by Edwin Hodder, a Civil Servant who had done a good deal of literary work for Cassell's, including "Conquests of the Cross," a serial