Anzia Yezierska tells of her odyssey from the sweatshops of New York's Lower East Side to success in Hollywood and then a return to poverty in New York

A literary discovery of considerable magnitude, these 98 previously unpub­lished poems by John Dewey, written principally in the 1910-18 period, illu­minate an emotive aspect in his intel­lectual life often not manifest in the prose works. Rumors of the existence of the poems have circulated among students of Dewey's life and writings since 1957, when Mrs. Roberta Dewey gained pos­session of them from the Columbia University Columbiana collection. But except for the few persons who saw copies made by the French scholar Deladelle five years after Dewey's death, the poems have remained inaccessible until now. None of the poems has hitherto been published. Mrs. Roberta Dewey and Dewey's children from his first marriage seem not to have known of Dewey's experiments in verse during his lifetime. And, as evidence presented here now shows, only two or three acquaintances knew of actual poems written by Dew­ey, one of them the Polish-American novelist Anzia Yezierska, who had a brief emotional involvement with Dewey in the 1917-18 period. The factual, rather than inferential, evi­dence of Dewey's relationship with Anzia Yezierska appears in the poems, which, taken as a whole, provide reveal­ing insights into Dewey's feelings and illuminate not only aspects of his emo­tions but of his thought as well. The fact that Dewey did not publish the poetry himself, together with the circumstances of its discovery and un­usual history, has led to the exception­ally careful editorial treatment of the poems given here. Scholars will find all the evidence for the authorship of the manuscripts clearly presented and all the changes and alterations carefully recorded. This edition has received the Modern Language Association of Amer­ica Center for Editions of American Authors Seal as an "approved text."

"The Rider on the White Horse" begins as a ghost story. A traveler finds himself caught in dangerously rough weather. On an island just offshore he glimpses the specter of a rider on a white horse rising and plunging in the wind and rain. Taking shelter at a local inn, the traveler mentions the apparition, and the local schoolmaster volunteers a story. It is a tale of ambition, of a young man, Hauke Heien, who is out not only to make a name for himself but to remake the world; of love and family, as Hauke and his wife try to come to terms with their late-born child's mental retardation; and of politics, as the community fights back against Hauke's initiatives. It is a story, too, about the crisis of faith, of wanting and missing the presence of the divine, and of the persistence of superstition. It is an appealingly matter-of-fact picture of rural life, a harrowing glimpse of spiritual isolation, and a stark vision of the violence of the natural world. Finally, it is a story about the basis of civilization in the act of human sacrifice. Anticipating "Lord of the Flies" and "The Lottery," Theodor Storm's novella, limpidly translated by the American poet James Wright, is not just the ghost story it first appears to be but an economical and gripping dramatization of some of the bloody questions that haunt the disenchanted modern world.

The Rider on the White Horse tells the story of Hauke Haien, a young man from a small town in Northern Frisia. Hauke is the son of a farmer and licensed surveyor, and does his best to learn his father's trade. Over time, he becomes very familiar with the dykes along the local coast. When local Deichgraf Tede Volkerts fires one of his hands, Hauke applies for the job and is accepted. He soon becomes a great help for Volkerts, which makes Ole Peters, the senior hand, dislike him. Hauke shows interest in the Deichgraf's daughter, Elke, and proposes marriage. After the unexpected deaths of both Hauke's and Elke's fathers, the people of the village must choose a new Deichgraf. Hauke does not hold the necessary lands required for the position, but when Elke announces that they are engaged, the traditionalists are satisfied and Hauke becomes the new Deichgraf. However, the people soon start talking about his white horse, which they believe is a resurrected skeleton that used to be visible on a small island, but is now gone.