ABSTRACT
Fifteen or twenty years ago, there was a vacant place in English fiction, waiting for a competent writer to ftIl it. We had novels ofhigh society, written sometimes with knowledge, frequently with more or less of startling ignorance; we had novels of low society, virtuous, vicious, and mixed; and we had a still greater number of novels dealing with members of the class for which the prayer ofAgur has been answered, -people who have neither poverty nor riches, but who are fed with material and mental food convenient for them, and who, being emphatically well-to-do, have that measure of intelligence, grace, and culture which is the fitting accompaniment of well-to-do-ness. The class which waited for a delineator was a large and important one,- that vaguely outlined lower middle section of society which, in the matter ofphysical comfort, approximates to the caste above it, and in its lack of the delicate requirements oflife has something in common with the caste below it, but which is, nevertheless, so recognisably differentiated from both, that confused classification is impossible even to the most superficial observer. The families of the imperfectly educated but fairly well-paid manager or clerk, of the tradesman who has 'got on' pecuniarily but hardly 'gone up' socially, and, to speak generally, of the typical ratepayers in an unfashionable London suburb, had not, perhaps, been entirely neglected, for Dickens and others had given them occasional attention; but they lacked a novelist of their own who should devote himself mainly or exclusively to them, and do for them what had been done by others for the classes and the masses.
