Synopses & Reviews
n Introduction to THE ENGLISH NOVEL Arnold Kettle VOLU ME TWO HENRY JAMES TO THE PRESENT HARPER TORCHBOOKS The Academy Library HARPER fc ROW. PUBLISHERS. NEW YORK AND EVANSTON AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH NOVEL Vol. II Henry James to the Present Printed in the United States of America This book was first published in 1951 in the English Literature division, edited by Basil Willey, of the Hutchinson University Library. It is reprinted by arrangement with Hutchinson Company Limited, London. First HARPER TORCHBOOK edition published 1960 CONTENTS Preface 7 PART i THE LAST VICTORIANS I Introduction 9 II Henry James The Portrait of a Lady 13 in Samuel Butler The Way of All Flesh 35 iv Thomas Hardy Tess of ike DUrbervilles 49 PART II THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THE FIRST QUARTER I Introduction 63 ii Joseph Conrad Nostromo 67 in Mr. Bennett and Mis. Woolf 82 Arnold Bennett The Old Wives 9 Tale 85 H. G. Wells Tono Bungay 89 John Galsworthy The Man of Property 95 Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse 100 iv D. H. Lawrence The Rainbow 111 v James Joyce Ulysses 135 vi E. M, Forster . A Passage to India 152 PART III THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THE SECOND QUARTER I Introduction 165 ii Aldous Huxley Point Counter Point 167 m Graham Greene The Heart of the Matter 170 6 CONTENTS iv Joyce Gary Mister Johnson 177 v L Compton-Burnett A Family and a Fortune 184 vi Henry Green Party Going 190 Notes and References 198 Reading List 202 Index 205 PREFACE As in the first volume of this little work, I have eschewed comprehensiveness in favour of concentration on a few specific books. My object has been to build a discussion of the develop ment of the modern English novel around the study of a dozen or so novels which have, intheir different ways, a more than casual significance. One of the problems of the student of the novel, whether he is the individual reader for pleasure 5 or the mejnber of some kind of educational group, is that novels are often rather long and the discussion of them vaguer than it need be. By concentrating on a few books I have hoped to provide a manageable syllabus for, say, a year or sos reading. Books of criticism which are not read in conjunction with the work they are discussing nearly always do more harm than good. In venturing to write about contemporary and near contemporary literature one is obviously laying oneself open to all kinds of difficulties. I make no claim whatever to have given each of the novels I have discussed its correct proportion of space or its ultimate evaluation, though naturally I have tried to concentrate on what seems to me most worth while. I have no doubt at all that I have missed out completely a number of books and writers more worthy of consideration than some I have touched on. Nor do I doubt that some of my judgements will look silly even to myself should I live another forty years. I should like once again to thank the friends who in advice and conversation have given me help, and to express my gratitude to the following individuals and publishing houses for their permission to make numerous quotations John Farquharson, on behalf of the estate of the kte Henry James for passages from The Portrait of a Lady Messrs. Macmillan Co. Tess of the DUrbervilles The Hogarth 8 PREFACE Press, Ltd. quotations from Virginia Woolfs works and Party Going Mrs. Frieda Lawrence Messrs. Edward Arnold Co. A Passage to India Mr. Graham Greene Miss Ivy Compton-Burnettand Messrs. Eyre Spottiswoode A Family and a Fortune Mr. Joyce Cary and Messrs. Michael Joseph Mister Johnson and Mr. Henry Green. A. K. PART I THE LAST VICTORIANS I. INTRODUCTION THE end of one epoch is the beginning of another. The three novels with the examination of which this volume opens do not look backwards. Each of these writers Henry James, Butler, Hardy is very much of his time but if one calls them the last Victorians it is not to indicate a mere obstinate clinging to a passing world. There is more than a whiff of the future in their work...