The Beckoning Hand, and Other Stories

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Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (italics).

Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).

THE BECKONING HAND ETC.

* * * * *

STORIES BY GRANT ALLEN.

STRANGE STORIES.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with a Frontispiece by George Du Maurier, 6s.; post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2s.

"Mr. Grant Allen has fully established his claim to be heard henceforth as a story-teller."--ACADEMY.

"No one will be able to say that the stories are dull. The lighter stories can be read with pleasure by everybody, and the book can be dipped into anywhere without disappointment. One and all, the stories are told with a delightful ease and with an abundance of lively humour."--ATHENÆUM.

"Almost all the stories are good, coming nearer to the weird power of Poe than any that we remember to have seen."--PALL MALL GAZETTE.

"Perhaps the best fiction of the year is 'Strange Stories.' Mr. Grant Allen certainly took his friends by surprise when he burst forth as the author of the stories which had appeared under the signature of J. Arbuthnot Wilson. He was known to us all as one of the most able of the rising men of the evolution school, his contributions to modern science being of considerable value. Few suspected him of such levity as telling light stories. The volume is distinctly good."--COUNTY GENTLEMAN.

PHILISTIA.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. 6d.; post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2s.

"A very clever, well-written novel, full of freshness and originality."--ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.

"A book displaying considerable cleverness.... Very readable and clever."--ACADEMY.

"'Philistia' is distinctly clever, and much may be learned from its perusal."--MORNING POST.

BABYLON.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with twelve Illustrations by P. Macnab, 3s. 6d.

"The book justifies itself amply. It is fresh, entertaining, and pleasant from beginning to end. The author has kept in check his peculiar power of weird and fantastic realism, but he has proved himself equally at home in the observation of commonplace character, and the reproduction of everyday life."--PALL MALL GAZETTE.

"Very bright and very amusing.... That it stands far above the average of contemporary fiction goes without saying."--SPECTATOR.

FOR MAIMIE'S SAKE.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.

"'For Maimie's Sake' is a book that every one who has made acquaintance with the stories signed by 'J. Arbuthnot Wilson' will naturally take up with pleasure. Pleasurable anticipation soon becomes interest, and this interest must rapidly grow into absorbed attention. The humour throughout the first part of Mr. Allen's story is delightful. The reader falls in love with laughing, lovely, unconventional Maimie."--ACADEMY.

"This is a very remarkable book. Maimie is essentially human, intensely womanly, and there is something so bewitching in her childish ignorance, something so innocent in her wickedness, that we can understand her friends' and her lovers' infatuation for her.... There is power of a very high order in writing which can so consistently, yet without the smallest effort, concentrate the reader's attention on the sinner as apart from the sin. There is not a character in the book which fails to interest us, and the writing is, of its kind, faultless."--TIME.