NOVELISTS AMD SOCIAL REFORM.

Otago Witness, Issue 2665, 12 April 1905, Page 69

NOVELISTS AMD SOCIAL REFORM.

Bt Cokstance Clyde.

The report of Maxim Goiky's danger should arouse in the English novelist conflicting emotions. He cannot but be sorry for his Russian brother of the pen; yet he must also feel tLafc literature is getting a lift up by the threat of a novelist's execution. English fictionists do not find themselves taken so seriously.

Yet they, like Gorky, are frequently novelists and social reformers at the same time. Nothing astonishes a new-comer more than the active part taken by writers — even those of the imaginative and romantic school — in the hard workaday difficulties of industrial life. Women writers are particular instances of this idiosyncrasy. The Lyceum Club deals more with international matters, but in the Writers' Club are many who take leading parts in various branches of social reform in England.

Mrs Emily Crawford's principal novel, "The Problem of Janus," would not lead anyone to suppose that she occupies a prominent position in the Householders' League, a cunningly-formed device for promulgating the belief in woman suffrage. To join the league is a very easy matter. For sixpence a year one is entitled to members-hip and a badge, and the one condition is a promise never to canvass for a candidate who does not uphold the franchise. By making the matter sa simple, Mrs Crawford gets thousands of women to join who might shrink were the Lusines, more complex. In the intervals ot correcting the proofs of her new novel, "Sorrel Top," MA Crawford frequently goes forth on her mission to arouse her sex io a sense of hei political disabilities.

The Freedom of Labour League claims Norah Yynne as one of its leaders Owing to partial ill-health, the author of "A Priest's Marriage" ha« not been .so much before the public of late ?,s a writer, but she has not discontinued "her work among women wage-earners, whose claims she considers are not always fairly recognised by the Labour Unions. Nora.h Vynne is a s?nall, bright-eyed woman, Irish in everything except birth — if one may be permitted au appropriate bull ; but she owns that a great-great-grandmother was a daughter of Erin, and this may account for her readiness to take the part of the minority.

"The Other Side of Tilings" is a series of interesting articles dealing with low life in tLe slums. It has been appearing in one of the well-known monthlies, and the authoress, Miss Malvery. is also to ho seen at the Writers' Club. She is partly Hindu by descent, and must possess considerable powers of mimierv to have iriincrled with the Whitechapel habitues and passed herself off so easily as one of themselves. She is as much interested in Thecsophy as slums, and it is said intends to start, a paper on that subject. Many writers have inveighed against the apprenticeship system and the wrongs of the shojD assistant. It may fall to the lot of H. G. Wells, however, to effect some reform, if it is any longer possible to do s-» by means of fiction. His Ferial in the Pall Mall Magazine is entitled "Kipps : The Story of a Simple Soul." and the sopl is that of a draper's apprentice, who begins his career as a snopboy, a victim of ihe "living-in"' system and of his master's tendency to regard margarine and watered beer as fit and protier nourishment for a growing lad. In Kipps's shop it is forbidden to shut up at closing time if the purchasers show any tendency to linger on : '•and death and disfigurement are the least of the evils'' that the gleomv s-hopbnv wishes vliosc- who t.nkp advantage of this tn^it permission. Mr Wells carefully warns nil ladies, since it is ladies that do these things, that such curses are their portion if pver they curtail the assistant's brief period of evening recreation.