The Atlantic Bookshelf: A Guide to Good Books

HOMELY should be an adjective of praise. But somehow American usage has given the word a plain and uninspired taste. Those durable and delightful books by Clarence Day, Life with Father and Life with Mother, are homely in the best sense. There is a remarkably homely quality in the dialect and descriptions of The Yearling. Homely and unimpeachably American are the books by Della T. Lutes, The Country Kitchen, Home Grown, and Millbrook, with their ruddy and authentic account of life in Southern Michigan in the 1880’s.