"MEMORIES of a Misspent Youth" is no mere book of memoirs basking in the glory of the great. It does, to be sure, tell much about the glamorous literary London of the nineties. It gives personal reminiscences of such diverse figures as Aubrey Beardsley and H. G. Wells. It includes many amusing anecdotes about the "Headly Rod" and the "Yaller Bok", about Oscar Wilde, George Moore, and about Israel Zangwill. But all this is incidental, as it pertains to the life of Grant Richards up to his twenty-third year. And this, his early life, he recounts with modesty, with delight and understanding.

Grant Richards' was not a gay, a silver spooned childhood. His father, a tutor in clasaies at Oxford, cared little for children, especially for male children, and the young boy was left pretty much to himself except when he had done wrong. But he was not a complaining child, and as he looks back, there is a melancholy charm, about his childhood that is attractive. And what he seems to have suffered from neglect, he gained in independence and self-sufficiency. Then there were always the summer holidays at Barmouth, at John o'Groat's, or on the island of Jersey, where he climbed rocks and swam with such of his father's students as "Q" Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. On one occasion, at Cadgwith it was, young Grant surprised Madame Modjeska and Forbes-Robertson deuning the "ample bathing dresses of the time" under enormous towels. "Go away, rude little boy", one of the ladies called out; and he ran off ashamed at his unmannerly curiosity".

At the City of London School, where he was sent to prepare for an Oxford Scholarship, he spent his time fighting fights that were seldom finished, playing boy's sort of games, and remaining an "unscionable time in one class". This course of life did not lead to a scholarship; and at the age of seventeen, the had went to work for a bookseller in Paternoster Row at twenty pounds a year. In these days every shilling he had went into theatre tickets; and he dreamed of being a dramatic critic. But the following year his career was definitely set in another direction, for he got a job with W. T. Stead on "The Review of Reviews".

It was while he was "doing the books" for the "Review" that he saved enough money and summened up enough courage to visit Parts, that "siren city" in his mother's eyes. Here under the guidance of will Rothenstein, he saw the world of Manet of the Meulin Rouge and of the restaurant Jupien which demonstrated its aristocratic patronage by a drawing of ladies and gentlemen hanging corenets on a coat-rack instead of hats.

Returned to London, Grant Richards' life was filled with the small details of his work and with his friends. There are Richard Le Gallience and Frank Harvis and his marvelous talk, G. R. S. Rarmsworth starting the "Daily Mail", and always Grant Atlen, young Richards uncle by marriage. There were rather milarious parties given by the brothers zangwill from one of which a large crowd returned in a hansom cab. Will Rothensiein on the roof and Phill May doing a great deal about driving the horse. And there was a group of literary men who gathered at the Crown Cub. The book ends at the beginning of Grant Richards' so distinguished career as a publisher. "Being twenty-four", he remarks, "I had no misgivings, I was like the little bear who had all his troubles before him".

It is a charming ending to a charming book. "Memories of a Misspent Youth has the flavor of an old man looking back indulgently on the foibles of his younger days with the perspective of a Charles Lamb and with somewhat of his pathos, his delight in small things and his sense of the beauty of human life. All that is wanting is a continuation of the book that will recount Grant Richards' life as a publisher and a writer, and that will trace the years from 1896 to the present