STRIKING the public eye in one of its most rigidly Puritanical periods, the diary of Maric Bashkirtseff created a sensation in Victorian England from Prime Minister Gladstone down to the rank and file of commoners who read it with relish. The diary was so popular that it was almost immediately translated into several languages, and it became synonymous with the appreciation of complete and candid self-revelation.

With such material as her basis, Dormer Creston has constructed a biography of Maric Bashkirtseff which is a mingling of tears and laughter, joy and deep tragedy. Such was the life of this youthful and ambitious artist. From her earliest days, which Miss Creston describes in a light and whimsical yein, to her later life, Maric Bashkirtseff demanded of the world, and life itself, all that it had to offer.

Her desire to enjoy the blessings of a perfect love was exceeded only by the keenest ambition to become recognized as a great artist. All through her brief career she held these goals before her, willing to sacrifice everything to acquire them. Yet she died at the age of twenty-four, having gone only a short way on her ambitious and difficult journey. Gladstone read her diary and recognized her as "a true genius, one of these abnormal beings who seem to be born into the world once or twice in a generation."

Maric's pathetic love affair with the dying Bastien-Lepage, another poor and struggling artist, is described with all the warmth and tenderness the author possesses. These last tragic scenes, when the ready realizes Bashkirtseff herself is doomed, stand out in striking contrast to the earlier, more lively moments of her childhood. Not only does the author capture the mood of her subject, but the very spirit of the times--the seventies in the continental capitals, Rome, Paris, Naples, and the rest. From life on the picturesque Riviera of the last Nineteenth Centry with its lazy and peaceful atmosphere we are wafted to the sordid dampness and depression of artists' studios on the Rive Gauche, with their moments of artificial happiness at the cost of bitter enmities and disappointments.

Throughout this amazing book, we are constantly aware of the poetic nature of its subject. We realize, possibly, that Marie Bashkirtseff was a genius, that her works should have their place in the British Museum, the Musee de Luxembourg, and the Nice Museum. For one who has not read the Bashkirtseff Diaries, "Fountains of Youth" presents a tantalizing attraction. For the reader who has, Miss Creston offers perhaps a slightly new interpretation of the bare facts. She flavors the words of the young artist with a beauty and poetry of her own which tend to enhance the value of the original.