Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Swinnerton, Frank (Arthur) - H. G. Wells

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H. G. WELLS

[Mr. Swinnerton] sees life and renders it with a steadiness and detachment and patience quite foreign to my disposition. He has no underlying motive. He sees and tells. His aim is the attainment of that beauty which comes with exquisite presentation. Seen through his art, life is seen as one sees things through a crystal lens, more intensely, more completed, and with less turbidity. There the business begins and ends for him. He does not want you or any one to do anything. (p. x)

Mr. Swinnerton, like Mr. James Joyce, does not repudiate the depths for the sake of the surface. His people are not splashes of appearance, but living minds. Jenny and Emmy in [Nocturne] are realities inside and out; they are imaginative creatures so complete that one can think with ease of Jenny ten years hence or of Emmy as a baby. The fickle Alf is one of the most perfect Cockneys—a type so easy to caricature and so hard to get true—in fiction. If there...

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1. Introduction
2. H. G. Wells
3. H. W. Boynton
4. Lola Ridge
5. H. W. Boynton
6. Rebecca West
7. Raymond Mortimer
8. P. C. Kennedy
9. RUTH CAPERS McKAY
10. Basil Davenport
11. George Dangerfield
12. Joseph Wood Krutch
13. George Dangerfield
14. The Times Literary Supplement
15. Commonweal
16. The Times Literary Supplement
17. Walter Allen
18. Ernest Buckler
19. The Times Literary Supplement
20. The Times Literary Supplement
21. Peter Ackroyd
22. James Brockway
23. Copyright

1. H. G. Wells