Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of Home

Taylor announces at the outset that the facts are borrowed from the Russian author Petjerski and the fancy is his own, and then sets about softening outlines he considers too rugged for literary use. Around the title story stand his tales of home: Pennsylvania Quakers, German inns, Americans abroad and at their own firesides. Taylor was the best-known travel writer in America before he was forty, and later translated Faust into its original meters. Fifty-eight plates, among them Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson, picture the American home and its roads, inns, and families that Taylor's tales of home bring to mind.