D. Appleton & Co. announce a Holland Fiction Series, introducing to American readers the best literature of modern Holland. They have been led to do this by the interest shown in Maarten Maartens' "Joost Avelingh," which they published some time ago. A new novel by Maarten Maartens will be included in the series.

Mrs. James T. Field is abroad with Miss Sarah Orne Jewett.

Daniel Lothrop, head of the D. Lothrop Company, of Boston, died February 18. He was born August 11, 1831.

Edward Augustus Freeman, the English historian, died of smallpox February 16, at Alicante, Spain, aged sixty-nine years.

With the issue of March 11 the Epoch ceased to exist as a separate publication, having been merged with Munsey's Magazine.

Edward Everett Hale will be seventy years old April 3.

Rev. George Thomas Dowling, D.D., who has been pastor of the Madison-avenue Reformed Church in Albany for nearly three years, has offered his resignation, to take effect July 1. It is his intention, he says, to devote himself for a few years to rest and literary pursuits, probably in Boston. Dr. Dowling's salary is $6,500.

In the New York Herald for March 13 were printed the opening lines of a story, entitled "The Way Out," which American writers have been invited to complete. The opening lines are by John Habberton. The entire tale, inclusive of the opening, should not exceed eight thousand words, nor contain less than seven thousand words. No limitations are imposed as to scenes, characters, or incidents. The decision will be left to Mr. Charles Ledyard Norton. For the best story offered the Herald will pay $100, the story to become the property of the Herald, and be published in full Sunday, May 1. Manuscripts must be typewritten, and must reach the Herald office not later than Saturday, April 16.

The frontispiece of the Magazine of Art (New York) for April is an etching by Chauvel from Troyon's "The Watering-place."

The Chautauquan (Meadville, Penn.) for April contains an excellent portrait of John Vance Cheney, the popular poet and critic.

Charles Keene, the famous caricaturist of Punch, who died about a year ago, is the subject of an article in Scribner's for April, illustrated with many pictures from his original drawings.

A portrait of Walt Whitman, from the painting by J.W. Alexander, forms the frontispiece to Harper's Magazine for April. Guido Biagi writes of "The Last Days of Percy Bysshe Shelley."

A society of American authors, on lines similar to the British and French societies of the same name, is proposed by Charles Burr Todd, who has set forth the grievances of American authors in a paper in the March Forum. The first meeting is to be held privately in New York on or before May 1, and when one hundred members are enrolled the society will be organized at once. Its objects are extension of copyright, abolition of letter-rate postage on manuscripts, amendment of international copyright law, and the adoption in America of the French statutes in regard to literary property. All persons who have written a book, or are engaged in writing for the press, are eligible to membership.