What’s wrong with George Bartram

Although I haven't been posting too often lately, there have actually been quite a few new items during the first half of this year, coronavirus and all. Too many to list here. The main additions are under:

The Daily Herald, to which GKC contributed reguarly between leaving the Daily News and his illness in 1914. In progress.

The Bystander, an early series "The Long Bow" between February and June 1904.

The Daily News, mostly because I noticed several differences between my list and Appleton's collection.

One of the things I've started to do, very slowly, is link online copies of the books reviewed by GKC. There's just such a lot of them, and while he occasionally reviewed a future classic like Kipling, most of the time they were obscure and even completely forgotten today. It is a sobering reminder of how little we may be acquainted with the literary atmosphere of the early 20th century, once we move away from the twenty or so authors whose works have managed to survive.

One of them has proved so elusive that I thought I might as well collect here what little information I could find on the internet.

George Bartram, whose book of stories The Thirteen Evenings GKC reviewed for The Bystander on April 6, 1904, was the pseudonym of one Henry Atton (1853-1915), officer of the British Customs and Excise, author (with H. H. Holland) of The King's Customs. An Account of Maritime Revenue & Contraband Traffic in England, Scotland, and Ireland, from the earliest times to the year 1800 (Vol. I 1908, Vol. II 1910).

The best (or rather only) research about him seems to be "From Clopton to Kerry: In Search of George Bartram" by J. Murphy and E. Chamberlain, in The Church of Ireland in Co Kerry.

As George Bartram he wrote much more: novels, short stories, poetry and essays. GKC wrote:

I cannot make out merely by wandering about Fleet Street and asking everybody I see whether Mr. George Bartram is very well-known or whether he isn't. If he is, I am delighted, if he is not I am if anything more delighted, seeing an honourable fight before me and a mission in life.

We can say now that he failed. Here is a list of the titles I could find, with links to online copies and the occasional review:

The People of Clopton (1897). Review in The Literary World.

The White-headed Boy (1898). Review in The Academy.

Ballads of Ghostly Shires. Folk Lore Verse (1900). Reviews in The Academy and The Publisher's Circular.

The Coming of Love (1900)

The Thirteen Evenings (1901). Reviews in The Academy and The Speaker.

The Longshoremen (1903). Notice in Guide to British Historical Fiction.

"The Crucifying of Macnulty" (Temple Bar, November 1902).

"Shakespeare's Boors" (Macmillan's Magazine, January 1905).

"The Old English Peasantry" (Macmillan's Magazine, August 1905).

Lads of the Fancy (1906). Reviews in The Athenaeum and The Saturday Review.

England's Garland (1913).

The Last English (1914).

Three stanzas of "The Green gateway" (from England's Garland) are quoted at the beginning of L. Oldershaw's England: A Nation (to which GKC contributed an article).

"On the Track of Christopher Sly" (from Thirteen Evenings) was reprinted in The Argosy, March 1933. This may have been the last time George Bartram was in print.