Excerpts from Reviews of Modern Love (1891) Found in Mosher’s “Mark Twain’s Scrap Book”
PORTLAND DAILY PRESS [Portland, ME]
December 12, 1891
“It is with great pleasure that we welcome the reappearance in such attractive form, of these strong and subtle sonnets by George Meredith. An added interest pertains to the volume since it is published by one of our own townfolks and eloquently commended by another… Mrs Cavazza, in what she quaintly called her ‘Foreword,’ shows us how delightfully the poetic power in the mind of a reader can irradiate and enhance the beauty and significance of an author’s thought…”
ADVERTIZER [????]
December 18, 1891
“Some books are valued for what they contain; some for their artistic make-up, and some for both… The volume under consideration [Modern Love] belongs to the third class.. One finds here a chance to exercise all the powers of his intellect when at its best, and is amply rewarded for his efforts. The foreword by Mrs. Cavazza is a fine piece of analytical and exegetical criticism….
Meredith’s ‘Modern Love’ was published in 1862, and having never been reprinted, has become extremely rare. It has always held a place of high favor with the lovers of analytical poetry, and now the author’s increasing fame as a novelist has awakened an interest in him as a poet among many others.
The desire of these admirers to possess ‘Modern Love’ in an appropriate setting can now be gratified, Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, of Portland, having issued an edition printed on Van Gelder’s hand-made paper and Japan vellum… The use of these papers marks an era in the history of book making in Maine, for without doubt it is the first instance where they have ever been employed. The cover and the title page are models of their kind; the press work is as perfect a specimen of good printing as one often sees… Surely this book will be prized by scholars and poets not only for what it contains but also for its artistic make up.”
THE DAILY NEWS [Portland]
December 18, 1891
“The finest specimen of the book-making art ever produced in Portland is an edition of George Meredith’s masterpiece, the series of sonnets entitled Modern Love, published by Thomas Bird Mosher. This is the first American edition of an important work, and it has for Foreword an analysis of the poem written by Mrs. Elisabeth Cavazza, of this city, than whom there is no American critic better fitted for the task of setting forth what manner of verse it is. It is indeed strange that this powerful and unique poem, not only has never before been republished in America, but that no second edition of it was ever printed in England, notwithstanding the high rank that has been assigned it by the best English critics.”
SUNDAY TIMES [Portland]
December 20, 1891
“To the average novel reader the name of George Meredith may have an unfamiliar sound, but in his strong English prose, keep and unsparing as the Damascus steel, the true literarian finds a genuine delight. As a poet he may be said to be even less widely read, so that the republishment of his Modern Love, a series of fifty sonnets first issued in England in 1862, is a notable contribution to American literature. There is a strangeness well nigh past belief in the fact that so remarkable a collection of poems in sonnet form did not long ago engage the attention of publisher in this country, also that but one edition of the work ever left the press in England. It has remained for one of our own townsmen to republish the book…
The volume has an added value, certainly, in the eyes of our literati, by reason of the finely written Foreword, or preface, by Mrs. Elisabeth Cavazza of this city, this is a critical analysis of the story well worthy this talented writer…”
THE TRANSCRIPT [Portland]
December 23, 1891
“The finest specimen of the book-making art ever produced in Portland is an edition of George Meredith’s masterpiece, the series of sonnets entitled Modern Love, published by Thomas Bird Mosher. This is the first American edition of an important work, and it has for Foreword an analysis of the poem written by Mrs. Elisabeth Cavazza, of this city, than whom there is no American critic better fitted for the task of setting forth what manner of verse it is. It is indeed strange that this powerful and unique poem, not only has never before been republished in America, but that no second edition of it was ever printed in England, notwithstanding the high rank that has been assigned it by the best English critics.”
EASTERN ARGUS [Portland]
December 19, 1891
“I saw a book the other day I wanted to steal, and might have so done had the opportunity been favorable… To me the book is made valuable by the ‘Foreword’ of Mrs. Cavazza, who plays Ariadne to the wanderer in the tortuous passages of Meredith’s thought and diction; and I apprehend that with many her introduction will throw wide open their library doors. When Mrs. Cavazza is at her best, and she is very near it in this preface, she is to my mind the most delightful musical and literary critic who uses the English tongue. Even when her judgements do not command assent (as is sometimes the case when she is out of sympathy with her author) they do command astonished admiration by distinction of style, by a vocabulary opulent beyond the dreams of avarice, and by an analytic power that challenges the achievements of the mightiest. Some of her sentences, I verily believe, have yet to find their match; some of her periods are as perfect as the O of Giotto. I once supposed the art of writing exquisite English like her’s died when De Quincey went to his grave…
Though I have long been aware of Mr. Mosher’s cultivated literary taste and passion for elegant editions I scarcely expected to see him accomplish what is generally believed to be possible only in large book-making centres… It is not only the first American edition of Meredith’s most characteristic poem, but the second edition ever published…”
DAILY STANDARD [Biddeford, ME]
December 24, 1891
“Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, son of the late Capt. Benjamin Mosher of this city, has recently made himself famous among the literary people of America, by republishing one of George Meredith’s poems–Modern Love–which was published in England in 1862 and has been out of print for many years….
Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton recently contributed the following laudatory criticism to the Boston Herald on Mr. Mosher’s production:
‘Modern Love,’ by George Meredith, is one of the most interesting publications of the present season… [and] we are indebted to Mr. T. B. Mosher of Portland, Me., for the reissue, not of the whole volume, but of that sequence entitled ‘Modern Love.’
THE TRANSCRIPT [Portland]
January 27, 1892
“The Critic of New York, in a commendatory notice of the elegant edition of George Meredith’s ‘Modern Love,’ lately published in Portland by Thomas B. Mosher, with a critical ‘Love word’ [sic] by Mrs. Cavazza, says: ‘We cannot refrain from speaking here of this work as a piece of bookmaking, and crediting it with being one of the most attractive books made in this country. This would be superfluous but for the fact that the volume was printed and bound in one of our smaller cities.’ ”
WORLD [New York]
December 20, 1891
“When, a few years ago, two clever travesties, at the expense of the poet Swinburne, appeared in the Portland Transcript, some of the members of a leading literary and artistic club in this city addressed a letter to the anonymous author, inviting him to join their association.
Great was their surprise to learn that the writer of the comic tragedies of ‘Algernon, the Footstool Bearer’ and ‘Algernon in London’ was a woman; although Col. Higginson might have informed them that it was not very surprising after all.
Since that time Mrs. Cavazza has made a name for herself in the more serious departments of literature. All have followed her criticisms of Italian publications in the Atlantic Monthly with interest, while her stories of Italian life and her poems have gained her reputation in the field of creative literature. It is this lady who has supervised the publication of George Meredith’s sonnet-sequence entitled ‘Modern Love,’ in a most artistic shape.”
BOSTON JOURNAL
January 2, 1892
“George Meredith shows himself in ‘Modern Love’ a poet who looks into the depths of life with an insight of its sadness. More intelligible than his novels, the poem is intense and passionate. Reason is placed before love. The theme is wedded unhappiness. Many true flashes are sent forth, and every word has its striking effect. The poem has elements of greatness. Published by T. B. Mosher, Portland, Me.”
THE REPUBLICAN [Springfield, MA]
December 20, 1891
“The book is one of noteworthy elegance, especially as it is printed and published at Portland, ME… the printer’s work is handsome. To the poem is prefixed a ‘foreword’ by Elisabeth Cavazza, very cleverly written, and comprising a fine critique of Meredith and a careful key to this work of his…”
BOSTON SUNDAY HERALD [Portland]
December 20, 1891
See comments under Daily Standard above.
THE MAHOGANY TREE [Boston]
January 2, 1892
“It seems rather queer to get hold of an edition of Mr. Meredith’s ‘Modern Love’ hailing from far down in Maine. But such an edition has been produced very prettily printed, too, on good paper. It is published, we believe, in three sizes. Mr. Meredith’s original book, containing some other poems besides ‘Modern Love,’ notably his ‘Juggling Jerry,’ perhaps the best known piece of verse he has done, was brought out in 1862, and has become very rare,–indeed, almost inaccessible outside of a few libraries. Yet the fifty sonnets (as, in spite of the scrupulous, we must call them) composing ‘Modern Love,” are wonderfully beautiful,–half Browning, half Elizabethan, and wholly Mr. Meredith and modern; indicate they are in thought, but simple and clear in expression, forming, as Mr. Swinburne says, a ‘great processional poem.’ This American edition is published by Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, at 37 Exchange Street, Portland.”
THE CRITIC
January 23, 1892
“Mr. George Meredith’s poem, ‘Modern Love,’ first published thirty years ago, has lately been honored in this country by being brought out in a limited edition, large and small paper, and accompanied by a ‘Foreword’ from the pen of Mrs. Elizabeth Cavazza, who, ‘listening to the general choir of poets, hears in the voice of Meredith a ‘chanting the Meredithyrambic,’ although not without evincing her high regard and appreciation for the fifty poems that follow her essay… We cannot refrain from speaking here of this work as a piece of bookmaking, and crediting it with being one of the most attractive books made in this country. This would be superfluous but for the fact that the volume was printed and bound in one of our small cities.”
THE LITERARY WORLD [Boston]
January 16, 1892 (Vol. XXIII, No. 2)
“Within the last half-dozen years the English public has been forced to acknowledge the fact that George Meredith is, in the opinion of the most thoughtful readers of today, the greatest living English novelist. Slowly, very slowly, this fact has dawned upon the conservative people with whom he makes his home; even now Mr. Meredith feels that he is more justly appreciated in America or in Scotland than in England. Not long after his novels began to be re-discovered in England, a complete edition of them was brought out in this country; but, although three volumes of his verse have also appeared here, this long, powerful, and romantic poem has been overlooked by some strange lack of literary judgement… A Portland publisher has at length issued a limited edition… The long delay seems the more unaccountable because Modern Love is in key with so much that is thought and said in what Mrs. Cavazza aptly calls this ‘over-subtle and analytical end of the century.’ We know no other great poem–this well deserves the adjective–which has for its theme the horrors of an uncongenial marriage where conventionality leads the wretched couple ‘to hide their skeleton’ and keep up appearances before the world….”
AMERICAN BOOKMAKER [New York]
January, 1892
“Thomas B. Mosher of Portland, Me., has had printed by the Brown Thurston Company of that city, a limited edition of George Meredith’s ‘Modern Love.’ The typography, on hand made paper, is well proportioned with the page margins, and the partially rubricated title, combined with the old-fashioned book covers and the Japan vellum wrappers, makes a beautiful outer dress.”
TRAVELER’S RECORD [New York ? ]
…We welcome it as adding to the list of Meredith’s admirers some who feel that the time spent in wringing the thought from his novels would afford greater returns elsewhere; and it could not have found a better expositor than Mrs. Cavazza. She has at once enthusiasm and sanity, penetration and patience, a strong intellect and glowing sense of beauty; she is herself a poet of excellent quality, and her insight and taste are rarely in error; she is deeply read not only in all the great English poetry, but in that of the sources whence the greatest modern school has drawn its chief inspiration… A great thinker and artist, Mr. Meredith may be, a strong thinker and fine poet he certainly is; but we cannot accept him as a ‘fire-bringer’ on the evidence of this poem. He brings none to us.”
BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER [Portland]
February 22, 1892
“George Meredith is not generally known to the public as a poet; neither has Portland, Me., been noted in the past as a publishing centre. When, therefore, a small, elegantly printed volume of verse by the treat English novelist emanates from the Maine city, it cannot fail to cause some surprise… It was first published 30 years ago, before Mr. Meredith had won his fame as a novelist. Just why it is revived now is not quite clear.”
THE COLLECTOR [New York]
February 15, 1892
“It is thirty years since the poem or rather series of poems carrying their idea forward from chapter to chapter, entitled ‘Modern Love’ was issued in London. With the critical [sic] it placed its author, George Meredith, in the new and advanced school of poetry represented, each in his special vein of thought, by Swinburne, Rossetti and William Morris… That this work should have remained till now without an American edition is at least curious. However, here we now have a beautiful issue, made by Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, of Portland, Me., with a strong critical introduction by Mrs. Elizabeth Cavazza of that city, which cannot but be appreciated by those who are already enrolled among George Meredith’s admirers nor fail to create new admirers for him…”
ATLANTIC MONTHLY
February, 1892
“A choicely printed and bound edition of this sequence of sonnets. The book is introduced by an admirable essay by Mrs. Elizabeth Cavazza, in which, with interpretative shill and good taste, she points out the underlying argument of this splendid achievement… Lovers of poetry owe a debt to editor and publisher for offering them this book in so convenient, beautiful, and intelligible a form.”
LW [Literary World?]
May 21, 1892
“The édition de luxe of George Meredith’s sonnet-sequence, Modern Love, published by Mr. Mosher of Portland, Maine, and fully noticed in these columns, was a source of much gratification to Mr. Meredith. He has expressed to the publisher his pleasure that this work, so long neglected at home, has had its first reprinting in a far-off city of the States. One result of its appearance has been the issue of a regular edition by Mr. Meredith’s publishers in England and in America….”
POET-LORE p 286
May 16, 1892
“Three beautiful books lie before us, each enticing in exterior, bound in characteristically fitting ways to suit their each very different but all eminent and distinguished subject-matter: [including] the dainty American reissue of George Meredith’s subtle sonnet sequence, ‘Modern Love’ {with preface by E. Cavazza. Portland, Me.: Thomas B. Mosher…)… These works of two American and one English poet represent a greet deal that is most salient in modern poetic expression, and, constituting at once a small and a large library,–a wide poetic range in but three volumes,–especially deserve purchase by one of liberal taste and culture…”
Note to Mosher from Bertram Dobell
London Bookseller January 14, 1892
“…I like the look of your edition of Meredith’s ‘Modern Love’ very much, and would order some did not our laws on copyright forbid their importation.”