ABSTRACT
It may easily seem impertinent for one who has no claim to the title of novelist, whose writings in all would make only a slender book, to criticise an article upon “ Writing Novels ” by Mr. Arnold Bennett, who might with reason claim to be a representative English novelist, whose writings are encyclopaedic in volume and variety. It may seem particularly impertinent, when, as is actually the case, the article in question is among the best of the multifarious deliverances of the author upon the science and practice of the writer’s craft. It is, however, exactly this extremity of impertinence which is in itself the justification of the critical attitude in a writer of the younger generation ; for if the younger generation (for which, even though it be probably non-existent, I am the self-constituted spokesman) has ideas or principles to put forward which are to govern its own attitude towards such an important literary question as the essentials of the great novel, no better occasion could be found than the presentation by one of the most accomplished novelists of the present day of his own matured conceptions of the subject. In brief, I wish to use Mr. Arnold Bennett’s article as a point d’appui for my own considerations upon the novel, not as an object of critical attack.
