"Shirley's pen is the gracefullest in London" was the verdict of Mark Lemon, the famous first Editor of _Punch_. For twenty years Shirley Brooks was Mark Lemon's right-hand man, and indeed, for the greater part of that period, was the guiding power. In 1870 he was unhesitatingly promoted to the editor's chair. In the present volume the subject of the memoir is presented to the reader in aspects corresponding to Shirley Brooks's many-sided character. Of Mr. Layard, the writer of this Biography, whose "Life of Charles Keene" will be remembered as a brilliant study of the greatest of _Punch_ artists, only this need be said, that he possesses the knowledge of a specialist in humorous and satirical literature, and has here presented Shirley Brooks, first in his public capacity as journalist and editor, and then as the humorous large-hearted man of the world, whom those who knew him best held, and hold, in tenderest memory. The series of initial letters from _Punch's_ "Essence of Parliament" are an especially happy feature in a book which has the exceptional merit of being the first full-dress biography of one of _Punch's_ five famous editors. Recollections of a Humourist =By A. W. à Beckett= (late assistant Editor of _Punch_). With Photogravure Portrait. 12s. 6d. net. "He has written an attractive book of gossip, unspiced by even a grain of malice, and full of easy, well-bred knowledge of the world, and especially that part of it which lives in clubland and dabbles in printer's ink."--_Standard._ "The great interest of the book lies in its pictures of certain aspects of social life (and especially of cultured Bohemian club life), which have now passed almost entirely away, and which reproduce in real life many of the scenes over which everybody has laughed in the pages of Dickens, Sala, and Thackeray."--_Daily News._ LONDON: SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD., No. 1 AMEN CORNER, E.C. BIOGRAPHIES Daniel O'Connell HIS EARLY LIFE AND JOURNAL, 1795-1802 Edited with an Introduction and Explanatory Notes by Arthur Houston. K.C., LL.D. In demy 8vo, cloth gilt, with full-page plate illustrations, 12s. 6d. net. "The book seems to me full of charm, alike for readers well acquainted with the story of O'Connell's career, and for those to whom he is only a more or less vague figure at a period of history already fading from the common memory. I have read the book with great pleasure."--MR. JUSTIN MCCARTHY in the _Daily Graphic_. "His (the Editor's) task has been most carefully, wisely, and sympathetically done.... Dr. Houston tells very attractively the story of O'Connell's early life."--_Westminster Gazette._ The Countess of Huntingdon and Her Circle By Sarah Tytler. With a photogravure and Eight other Illustrations. 12s. 6d. net.