stage for almost twenty years, and most of us believed he had definitely abandoned novel-writing. From 1889 to 1909, he produced nineteen plays, nearly every one of them successful. Then last year he astonished everybody by publishing a novel of over six hundred closely printed pages, called _Das hohe Lied_, translated into English as _The Song of Songs_. This has had an enormous success, and for 1908-1909, is the best selling work of fiction in the large cities of Germany. The immense vogue of his early plays had much to do with the wide circulation of his previously published novels. Despite the now universally acknowledged excellence of _Frau Sorge_, it attracted, at the time of its appearance, very little attention. It is going beyond the facts to say with one German critic that "it dropped stillborn from the press"; but it did not give the author anything like the fame he deserved. After the first night of _Die Ehre_, the public became inquisitive. A search was made for everything the new author had written, and the two novels _Frau Sorge_, and the very recent _Katzensteg_, were fairly pounced upon. The small stock on hand was immediately exhausted, and the presses poured forth edition after edition. At first _Der Katzensteg_ received the louder tribute of praise; it was hailed by many otherwise sane critics as the greatest work of fiction that Germany had ever produced. But after the tumult and the shouting died, the people recognised the superiority of the former novel. To-day _Der Katzensteg_ is, comparatively speaking, little read, and one seldom hears it mentioned. _Frau Sorge_, on the other hand, has not only attained more editions than any other work, either play or novel, by its author, but it bears the signs that mark a classic. It is one of the very few truly great German novels, and it is possible that this early written story will survive everything that Sudermann has since produced, which is saying a good deal. It looks like a fixed star.