ONE of the rare instances of an Oxford fiction publication, "Coronation Summer," soon justifies itself as a valuable document in either fiction or non-fiction lists. It is, in short, a mirror of the early Victorian era. In the character of Frances Harcourt the reader is led through the highways and byways of that period when the tiny, buxom, fairy-Queen Victoria was about to ascend the throne of England. Fanny, a native of Norfolk, prepares her pilgrimage to London to see the coronation which was to occur sometime that summer; no one seemed to know exactly when.

Eventually the torrent of mingled loyalty and curiosity which is this year again carrying hundreds of travellers from all over the world to London carried Fanny and her father to the great gas-lit metropolis. Here she was allowed, at times almost forced, by her indulgent father to see all the sights and miss nothing for which London or its environs was famous, while he condescended to spend a goodly portion of his time at an establishment known simply as "White's" from which he returned each evening in great spirits.

In this remarkable book Mrs. Thirkell gives to a Twentieth Century world which is itself hustling to a Coronation, an accurate interpretation of its great-grandparents, and their times. While society wept over the sentimentality of its men of letters, one alone among them was striving to reform the more ugly aspects of life. Dickens was indeed at work here to wield the powers at his command to raise the lower classes from the degradation and poverty which he knew so well. Not only does "Coronation Summer" paint a portrait of Victoria, her coronation, and her era, but it brings out in vivid colors the emotions and the intellectual ambitions which resulted in the works of Dickens. Thackeray, and all the rest.