WOMEN NOVELISTS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 81, 5 April 1923, Page 9

WOMEN NOVELISTS

AN INTERESTING TALK,

There was a. large attendance at the Pioneer Club on Wednesday night, when Mr. Charles Wilson, Parliamentary. Librarian, gave a most interesting "Talk" on "Some Women Novelists, Old and New." Mr. Wilson, who dealt with his E;ubject in a gossipy, highly entertaining way, made some, brief reference to the stories of Madame Apliva Behn, the first English woman novelist and dramatist, a lady with a most variegated and romantic career. Mr. Wilson alluded to the "blood curdlers" of the eighteenth century, such as "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and.to two lady novelists of the Johnsonian period, Fanny Hurney and Hannah More, passing onto Marie Edgeworth's ''Castle. Rackrent," which, he said, was often thought to have inspired Scott with the idea-of dealing with Scottish life in fiction; to Susan Ferrier, whose "Marriage Inheritance" and "Destiny" were so warmly commended by the author of "Waveney"; and so on to "the fair and witty Jane," Jane Austen. In "Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility," and others of Miss Austen's novels they had, said Mr. Wilson, some delightful pictures of English social life. Passion, Jane Austen did not deal in, nor was there any deep psychology in her stories. But they had a quiet, restful charm of their own, which, in their own day, won the admiration of men such as Coleridge, Southey, and Lord Macaulay. and that they still held their own, a devoted if comparatively limited public, was proved by the frequently-appearing new editions. After some very-amusing quotations from a novel by Mrs. de Eos, a writer of tha earlier Victorian days, Mr. Wilson proceeded to gossip very agreeably on the Bronte Sisters, Mrs. Gaskell, George Eliot, and Ouida, and Mis? Braddon, on Mrs. Henry Wood (of ".Eaet Lynns" fame), Mts. Oliphant, and the novels of Bhoda Broughton and Helen Mathers. Mrs. Crack's "John Halifax, Gentleman" was Briefly alluded to, also the too prounounced moral stories of Emma Jane Worboise and Edna. Lyall. Coming to later days, Mr. Wilson refevred to Mrs. Humphry Ward, whose father, Thomas Arnold (brother of the great Matthew of that ilk) was, he said, for some months engaged in farming at Makara and was afterwards a schoolmaster in Nelson; to Lucas Malet (Charles Kingsley's daughter), the authoi- of "The History of Richard Calmady"; to Mark Chohnondeley, and Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler; and to Mrs. Flora Annie Steel, whose Indian stories were, said Mr. Wilson, held by many Anglo-Indians to give a more truthfid view of -Indian life than even those of Rudyard Kipling. An interesting summary of the work of a group of leading present-day lady novelists, and brief survey of fiction by American lady writers brought a very chatty and entertaining "talk" to a conclusion. Upon the motion of Mrs. Coleridge, Mr. Wilson was accorded a very hearty vote of thanks, the hop© being expressed that he would favour the club with another "Literary Gossip" on some future occasion. Dr. Agnes Bennett occupied the chair.