ENGLISH NOVELISTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

ENGLISH NOVELISTS.

PAST AND PRESENT. A SURVEY BY NOVELISTS. "... Much the best, in fact the only "rood, critics of fiction writing to-day are themselves novelists of repute." This assertion of Derek Vereehoylc, who edited "The English Novelists: A Survey of the Novel by Contemporary Novelists" (Cliatto and Windus) is not likelv to he accepted without challenge liy those who dislike the current Fnglish custom of novelists reviewing one another's books. It in a custom that seems to be at least partly responsible for the lavish use of superlatives and the over-frequent discovery of "masterpieces"' in fiction. This being said, it •should also be said that Mr. Verschoyle lnit* about a score of essays, nearly all of which arc stimulating. Their authors' judgment need not be accepted art filial, but then, an Sean O'Faolain remarks at the beginning of his essay on Dickens and Thackeray, "There never was and never will be a final judgment- 011 any writer," unless (as he might have added) it be the unanimous judgment which consigns him to oblivion. One merit of these essays is that nearly all of them will kindle or rekindle in the reader the desire to read the works of their subject. Defoe and To-day. The purpose of the book is not to provide a chronologically complete survey of the Knglirth novel, but to trace its development by discussing the writers who have made the most important contributions to il.s growth. The writers chosen are Chaucer, Malory, Lyle and Sidney, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding and Smollett, Stern, Jane Austen, Scott, Peacock, Dickens and Thackeray, the Brontes. Trollope, Meredith, Butler, Henry Januv. Hardy and Conrad, D. 11. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley, E. M. Forstcr and Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. Of these there is room to mention onlv a few.

In writing of Defoe, Mr. V. S. Priteliett makes the point that his soeial environment resembles the conditions of to-day. "The wishes, prejudices and concerns of a newly-made class had become vocal." . . . The foundation of the Royal Society in I(>l>2, three years after Defoe was born, was a sign of the change which had come over England, for a simple style was required in its scientific publications, "just as the demand of the 8.8.C. for simple language in its talks arises from the difficulties of scientific language and the appearance of a new public where even the learned arc inexpert outside their speciality." " A crisis in style,' Mr. Priteliett adds, "is the expression of a change in political and social conditions'? . . . Our style crisis is the modern class crisis, and while tradition tends to absorb change in England, in America the younger naturalistic writers of the Hemingway type have turned ... to the common man's way of a story, to his repetitions, his simplified view of life, his cither limited or bnitalised sensibility and his mainchance philosophy. Like Defoe, such writers ... as far as the novel or some new literary form is concerned, may be signposts, points of departure. But Defoe had far greater vitality than most of these moderns. Scott's Strength and Weakness. Mr. Edwin Muir, who writes on Walter Scott, declares that there is probably no other great novelist whose direct infill-, cnco on the novel has been more trivial. Although his creative power is unrivalled.' "iii his stories tlie public got the upper hand of the novelist, and it has kept its advantage, with a few setbacks, ever since." In reading Scott, we up thinking altogether and do not ask if what we are being shown is human life. Sometimes it is and- sometimes it is not. . . ." Yet Scott's characterisation is matchless, particularly his portraits of humble people. Both this defect and this strength, according to -Nil". Muir, arc traceable to the condition of Scotland in the author's lifetime. Mr. O'Faolain, whose essay on Dickens and Thackeray does little more than mention Thackeray, finds that Dickens "made an excellent bargain with his own didicult age." Mr. E. i<\ Benson reflects upon the strange (and, indeed, inexplicable) fact that out of a small parsonage on the bleak Yorkshire moors came three immortal novels, and declares that "VVuthcriiig Heights" is "second to none in the fiction of the world." Mr. H. E. Bates has no difficulty in concluding that Conrad will outlive Thomas Hardy; Law. ronee, says Mr. Peter Quennell, was a disappointing novelist, perverse, prejudiced and wrong-headed, but lie had vitality and a spiritual integrity; Mr. Huxley's novels are stimulating but unsatisfying. Experamentalists. Mr. E. B. C. Jones, who writes on E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, does not appear to have made up his own mind. It does not greatly help the reader to be told that the six persons in a book are "ripples or arabesques of foam upon the wave of existence." Mr. L. A. 0. Strong assures us that "nothing but habit stands in the way" of our understanding the methods of James Jovce, whose great technical contribution to the art of the novel has been "flexibilitv and resource in the fitting of speech to character." But, after ail, hiibit is a formidable obstacle, and Mr. .Joyce may never overcome it, particularly when in several English-speaking countries his novels are banned. Mr. Yersehoyle has done a useful work. This is no catalogue or text-book of the Knglish novel, but though its nineteen authors differ in method they do achieve their editor's purpose, of providing a bird's-eye view of the novel's prospect. As Mr. Yersehoyle anticipates, not every reader will approve of his selection of subjects, which is perhaps most debatable where living authors are concerned. The influence of the others is undoubted, though opinions may differ as to its importance; but- it is still doubtful whether any influence exerted by Lawrence, Huxley, Forster and Virginia Woolf will be of permanent importance.