OF LITERARY INTEREST

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 2, Issue 1, 2 July 1923, Page 22

OF LITERARY INTEREST

Women Novelists

Some Writers Who Have Gained Popularity SINCE the war the number of women writers of fiction in England has increased enormously, says the Paris Evening Telegram. If a poll were taken to decide the most popular writer of fiction, more than a, dozen women's names would be found in the lists, including Dorothy Richardson, Rose Macaulay, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Ethel Sidgwiek, Katharine Mansfield, Virginia. Woolf, Rebecca. West, Stella. Benson, E. M. Dolafiold, ('lenience Dane, (1. B. Stern, Mary Webb, Eleanor Farjeon, V. Sackville-West, Constance Holme, Sylvia Lynd, P. Tennyson Jesse, and probably Mary Fulton, Hope Mirrlees, Eleanor Mordaunt, Amber Reeves, and Violet Meynell. Test of Time The time test is a. hard one. It would be an interesting venture to guess which of our favourites in a poll for popularity to-day will still be running ten to twenty years from now. Two guesses seem safe. One is that the name of May Sinclair will still be known and her books read. Although not eligible for the poll, she belongs in a way to the present generation of novelists, as well as to that of a past or passing one. She might even be called the dean of English women novelists of to-day. While she has been a leader, she had also been a fellow-student and coworker with the younger writers, and she might even acknowledge to having profited by occasional ventures, into new parts from a. few- of them —Dorothy Richardson, for example. The other guess is that one of the youngest, probably the youngest, competitors is going to "{"Trove, if not a winner, at least a good runner. Stella. Benson, whose first book, "I Pose," was published in 1917, when she was in her teens, has shown a steady development in the later works, "This is the End'' and ''Living Alone." Some Faults It is more for this reason than an actual estimate of her output up to this time that her name is included among those of Katherine Mansfield, Rose Macaulay, Rebecca West, Sheila Kaye-Smith, and Virginia Woolf. In actual quality Miss Benson's work does not stand comparison with any of the five mentioned. But a forward outlook gives cause for thought. Rebecca West's last novel, "The Judge," has proved such a. disappointment to those who had previously hailed her as the greatest woman novelist of her time, that, her best rating to-day must be based upon the high qualify of her work as literary critic. Rose Macaulay 's excessive cleverness has become a liability instead of an asset, in her latest publications: Sheila Kaye-Smith's insistence upon being 50 per cent, if not more, a man, is reflecting negatively upon the tine qualities that had given high promise of leading her into the coveted place of the greatest. Women Like Books About Women I WILE have fifteen copies of 'This Freedom,' and ten copies of 'The Breaking Point,' " I heard a woman in a New York book-shop say recently. She was sending books to her friends instead of Christmas cards, and this order was typical of the lavish way American men and women buy books during the holiday season. The two books of the year which have gone well over the one hundred

thousand mark arc A. S. M. Hutchinson's ''This Freedom'' and Mary Roberts Rinehart's ''The Breaking Point." They are both stories about women, which any American publisher will tell you is the main reason for their popularity. The American woman is the greatest reader of fiction in the world, and she prefers stories about women, their feelings, sufferings, perplexities, problems. She may resent "This Freedom''—as a matter of fact she does —but it gives her a chance for discussion, so she sends it to her friends or advises them to get it at their fiction library. Also she organist's meetings to talk it over, and she writes essays on it. Booksellers say that the sales of "This Freedom" will far exceed those of "If Winter Comes. r V* II R London Morning Post says: A "Sir James Barrie, it appears, owed the name of 'Wendy' in 'Peter Ban' to W. E. Henley's little daughter. Barrie, as usual with children, had become great chums with her, but she could not pronounce his name with the double 'r' in it. One day she heard her father allude to Barrie as 'friend.' Thereupon she began to call him 'Wendy,' the nearest she could get to the word. Hence the name. The little girl, as everybody knows, died early, but she lives as the original of 'Wendy.' '' New Zealanders in London Talk with Dora Wilcox NEW Zealanders, sad to say, do not " take that interest in their own folk who leave the Dominion that they should. Australians never lose touch with those who have made the name of Australia famous in other lands, and Americans not only "boost"' all their own, but often lay claim to other nations' children. Not so Xew Zealanders. They yet have to learn that pride of birth which builds a nation. In a short talk with a returned Xew Zea lander, Mrs. Hnmelius, who left her native land many years ago and became the wife of a Belgian professor, and is known to fame as Dora Wilcox, the New Zealand poetess, referred to the success attained by some of the sons and daughters of the Dominion who are at present working in London. Miss Evelyn I sift, formerly a Wellington journalist, and daughter of the late Rev. Frank Isitt, is as present in a very responsible position in London as the representative of the Manchester Guardian, one of England's most solid journals, which maintains a

London office as well as its headquarters in Manchester. Miss Isitt has succeeded admirably in the keenest, literary competition in the world, and holds her own with the best. Another writer, who was formerly an Aucklander, is Miss Jessie Weston, who writes as "C. de Therry," mainly in the Onlooker, ami who has made a literary success. Mrs. Ilamelius has just, received the news that Miss Weston has returned to Australia, recently, and was married at Adelaide on the 7th of February to a gentleman from Melbourne. Woman Novelist of Rural England /'// C. A. DAWSON SCOTT PRESSED by bulky parcels of manuscript against, the glazed front of a cupboard in my room are a number of newspaper cuttings — portraits of friends. From among them, Sheila Kaye-Smith looks down at me as I work, a woman with a child's pouting mouth and the eyes of someone old and wise. At the moment she is denying me a sight of her book of poems because, as she says, it is. just a limited edition of 2;>o copies, duly numbered and autographed. The type is to be dispersed, so that the book will not be published at. all in the ordinary sense—merely issued to the subscribers. '-'Besides,'' says she —and here is the little prick "they belong to a side of me you have not seen." After that, 'of course, I feel that I must get. a glimpse of those Saints in Sussex. 1 want, to know—yes, I really must know —whether my novelist is also a poet. "The Last of the House of Alard" is her new novel, and I am wondering whether it can possibly interest me more than did ".Joanna (bidden" or as much as "Little England," that tender and beautiful story of humble folk. When you say that Miss KayeSmith lives on a hill above the sea. you give an impression of bleakness which is so different from the truth as to be almost ludicrous. Prom the side of her home, the hill, rocky, tree-clad, goes up and up, sheltering the house from the north and east winds. About it are more trees and a. protecting garden wall, below which latter, a sweetness in that smooth and tidy place, darkfaced wallflowers are now in bloom. Far down the slope, a grey glitter, is the English Channel. The land, not the water, appeals to her. When she came to Cornwall, what we talked about was not, the beauty of those lonely shores, but soils and farming possibilities . . . the harvest of the land, not of the deep. Her talk, indeed, is very like her books, those fine large books with their outdoor atmosphere, their clearly seen psychology, their preoccupation with sublimated, rather than functional, emotion, and their lack of form. More than one of them makes me think of " Tono-Bungay," a story which lives because between its covers are real and vital people; but lives only because of that, and always in spite of the fact that it broke in the middle. Miss Kaye-Smith handicaps herself in the same way. The climax of several of her books comes in the middle, instead of at the end. Because of the human quality of her books, however, we go on reading, and eventually give them a place on our shelves among the best literature of the day. NOTE. — "Helps to Young Writers" trill he found on page 38,