Appreciation of permission to quote extracts from printed works and to use illustrations is acknowledged to Sir Edmund Gosse, Mr. Rudyard Kipling and his agents, A. P. Watt & Son, to editors of _The Atlantic Monthly_, _The Bookman_, _The Edinburgh Review_, and the publishing houses of American-Scandinavian Foundation, D. Appleton & Co., Boni & Liveright, The Century Co., Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc., Doubleday, Page & Company, Ginn and Company, Henry Holt and Company, Houghton Mifflin Company, B. W. Huebsch, Inc., Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Little, Brown & Company, J. B. Lippincott Company, Longmans, Green & Co., The Macmillan Company, Oxford University Press, American Branch, The Pilgrim Press, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Thomas Seltzer, Inc., Leonard Scott Publication Company, Herman Struck, W. P. Trumbauer, The University of Pennsylvania and Yale University Press. ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE Worcester, Massachusetts, September, 1925 CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE vii CHAPTER I. ALFRED NOBEL: THE CONDITIONS OF HIS WILL AND LITERARY RESULTS 1 II. POETS OF FRANCE AND PROVENCE 21 Sully-Prudhomme (1901) 21 Frédéric Mistral (1904) 31 III. TWO GERMAN SCHOLARS 42 Theodor Mommsen (1902) 42 Rudolf Eucken (1908) 48 IV. BJÖRNSON: NORWEGIAN NOVELIST AND PLAYWRIGHT (1903) 58 V. GIOSUÈ CARDUCCI--ITALIAN POET (1906) 72 VI. THE WRITINGS OF RUDYARD KIPLING BEFORE AND AFTER THE AWARD (1907) 85 VII. SELMA LAGERLÖF--SWEDISH REALIST AND IDEALIST (1909) 104 VIII. PAUL HEYSE (1910)--GERHART HAUPTMANN (1912) 124 IX. MAETERLINCK--BELGIAN SYMBOLIST AND POET-PLAYWRIGHT (1911) 148 X. RABINDRANATH TAGORE--BENGALESE MYSTIC-POET (1913) 159 XI. ROMAIN ROLLAND AND _JEAN-CHRISTOPHE_ (1915) 175 XII. A GROUP OF WINNERS--NOVELISTS AND POETS 189 Verner Von Heidenstam (1916) 189 Henrik Pontoppidan (1917) 197 Karl Gjellerup (1917) 201 Carl Spitteler (1919) 205 XIII. KNUT HAMSUN AND HIS NOVELS OF NORWEGIAN LIFE (1920) 213 XIV. ANATOLE FRANCE--VERSATILE STYLIST IN FICTION AND ESSAYS (1921) 224 XV. TWO SPANISH DRAMATISTS 239