A CURIOUS BOOK.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 3160, 24 September 1892, Page 5 (Supplement)

A CURIOUS BOOK.

A Loxnox contemporary thus speaks of one of the moat curious books of the season: —" • The Fate of Fenella," bv Miss Helen Mathers, Justin H. M'Carthy, Mrs F. E. Trollope, A Conan Dovle, MKs May Crotnmelin, F. C. Philips, 'Rita,'. Joseph Hatton Miss Lovett Cameron, Bram Stoker, Miss Florence Marryat, Frank Danby, Mrs Edward Kennard, Richard Dowling, Mrs Hungerford, Arthur A'Becket, Miss Jean Middlomasa, Clement Scott, Miss Clo Graves, H. W. Lucy, Miss A. Sergeant, G. Manvillo Fenn, ' Tasma,' and F. Anstay ; in three volumes. This may fairly be described as tho most extraordinary novel over written. It is a piece of intellectual and romantic hybridisation without parallel. The idea of getting twenty-four wellknown writers each to pi educe a chapter of a novel, to work without collaboration, and to have nothing to work upon but the previous chapters, originally occurred to the fertile brain of Mr J. S. Wood, the editor of ' The Gentlewoman.' It is a ' development Novel,' tho chapters of which were written by ladies who competed for a prize offered for the bost continuation of the story. Inexperienced as the majority of the authors of ' A Novel Novel' were, they produced an exciting narrative, if not a work of art. ' The Fate of Fenella' can claim to be both exciting and artistic. Mr Wood's ten months' patient labour in connection with it havo been amp!}' rewarded, and tho highest compliment we can pay the novel is to say thit probably not one of the twenty-four contributors, if ho or she had been requested to write a novel for ' The Gentlewoman,' would have produced a story so unflagging in its movement and interost. Wo have Mr Wood's assurance that there has been no sort of collaboration, Otberwiso.it would be incredible that this narrative, forming a eon aistent whole and working inevitably to its end, was not the outcome of many anxious conferences. But there was, Mr Wood says, 'no dominant mind,' and every writer influenced the novel only to the extent of his or her own chapter. The work shows that the expert novelist is like the expert detective or counsel. Ho wants only a hint to guide him to great ends, and one of the most attractive attributes of this book is the manner in which the slightest thread of circumstance is taken up by succeeding contributors and made more and more of."