CRITICS OF THE NOVEL.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 846, 18 June 1910, Page 9

CRITICS OF THE NOVEL.

"What have been the chief changes iii the. Knglisli-writfen novel within rcc<?nt years? And have thoso changes been for its good in human interest and literary quality?" The "Book Monthly" has' put those interesting cjHnstions to "well-known authors and critics, and hero arc some of the replies: Mr. W. 11. Chesson says that "English fiction suitors from poverty of thought as distinguished from cold fact." Mr. H. G. Wells says: "I don't.road inany, but when I do lake up ono by \ now writer, moro often thin not I

am surprised b,v its power and quality. Thorn is, I should think, an extraordinary .abundance of admirable work being published now. ".My game is to break away from what I may call the objective, the dramatic novel, and to utilise every device I can find for a subjective presentation of life.' I caro very little for what people say' or do and very much for how tliey feci and seo tilings as they say . and do. "Hut Arnold Bennett, whoso 'Old Wives' Tale' is anyhow a novel of quite the first rank, is pitilessly objective. Galsworthy is still more detached ami objective ai}d dramatic. Conrad, like James, speculates about bis characters, but does not let you into them." Jlr. James Douglas says: —"The new force in fiction is woman. Host of our novels are wiitton by women for women and for Women by men. Few men read novels. The seminal forces in our fiction are feminist. Wells and Galsworthy, for cxamplo, arc feminist pioneers; and they are smashing the English novel into smithereens. They arc painting life as it is. The old school of amorists and glamorists is dead. The defect of the new school is that it lacks imagination and humour. It is photographically hard and harsh and brutal, like the daily paper snapshots. Butsooner or later it . will throw up a man of genius who can fuse sympathy with sincerity and tenderness "with truth. Wells and Galsworthy are the men to watch, for they are the 'outstanding changes' in the English novel." Jlr. Hubert Bland says"During the last ten or fifteen years the novel —the averago novel —has distinctly improved, ■ improved both from a literary and ail artistic point of view. It is better written; 1 mean tlio literary .<tylo of it. even the grammar, is better. There are fewer cliches of phraso and fewer cliches of character."