Critic and biographer of Thoreau and Whitman, HENRY SEIDEL CANDY began his editing as an assistant to Wilbur Cross on the Yale Review. From 1924 to 1936 he was the Editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, and on the founding of the Book-of-the-Month Club, twenty-five years ago, he became the Chairman of its Board of Judges. Now looking back over that quarter century, he singles out those books which he believes to have been milestones in contemporary literature.