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The chapters containing Uddgren’s straightforward, unadorned account of his several interviews with Strindberg in Germany, France and Sweden are not only highly interesting from an historical point of view, but shed a great deal of new light upon the complex psychic life and personality of the poet and reformer.

Uddgren’s broad, sympathetic views and simplicity of presentation cannot help producing a tonic effect upon the reader when juxtaposited with the intolerance and the depression wrought by the distortion of facts, malicious attacks, meaningless bombast and glittering generalities of some of the self-appointed high priests of Strindberg criticism on both sides of the Atlantic.

With the exception of Lind af Hageby, Hermann Esswein, Emil Schering and Drs. Schleich and Landquist, the translator knows of no other writer who seems so well qualified to discuss Strindberg’s extraordinary life and immortal achievements as the author of this little volume. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the book will be welcomed by all students of Strindberg, and that it may fall into the hands of many of those whose knowledge of a great and good man is limited to the glaring misrepresentations, wilful or otherwise, of that stubbornly narrow-minded and vociferous clique of reactionaries who have justly been branded with the fitting epithet of eagle-eating monkeys.

Philadelphia, Pa.

May 1920.