The Disentanglers

Whatever Mr. Andrew Lang writes he writes well. There is nish and polish to his work, the desiderata in all species of labor, but more especially in literature. His latest book, The Disentanglers, tends further to strengthen this generality. The plot of the book may best be given in the words of its originators, two young and impecunious gentlemen of London, as unfolded in the rst chapter, appropriately entitled The Great Idea; " Family rows about marriages. . . . The problem for the family, for hundreds of families, is to get the undesirable marriage o without the usual row. Very few people really like a row. . . . They want a pacic solution-marriage on, no remonstrances. . . . We are going to do it by a scientic and thoroughly organized system of disengaging or disentangling. We enlist a lot of girls and fellows like ourselves, beautiful, attractive, young, or not so young, well connected, intellectual, athletic, but all broke. . We send them out on demand, carefully selecting our agents to meet the circumstances in every case." The plot, as thus roughly sketched, presents almost unlimited poten- tialities, which Mr. Lang has fully utilized in the eleven stories that follow. This book is illustrated and annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.