[Here] is a literary problem for you. Read the following passage, and guess who wrote it:

Mr. Sims was in a better position than either Mr. Leicester or Mr. Twist. At a word from Mr. Sims, both Mr. Twist and Mr. Leicester would have been forced to leave the firm. They, although they had worked there for fifteen years and a quarter of a century respectively, and although they knew the business through and through, and could produce the papers unaided, had no status. They could be dismissed at a month's notice. Mr. Sims could not be dismissed. Although the junior, he was, by his purchase of a larger share, the principal partner in the firm. Mr. Twist and Mr. Leicester could run the business, and Mr. Sims could not do so; but Mr. Sims had had the good fortune to possess a rather wealthy uncle, and he was for this reason favourably situated. It might have been supposed that Mr. Sims thought highly of Mr. Twist and Mr. Leicester, and valued them for their long service and experience. He did not so value them. To him they were both merely employees, to be kept or dismissed at his own will.

Whom have you guessed? Of course, Mr. Arnold Bennett. The manner, the mannerisms, and the moral: the repetitions, and the avoidance of repetition: the blend of staccato and rhythmical effects—all, all are Bennett, pure and perfect Bennett. But they happen, in this instance, to be Mr. Swinnerton. And I dwell on this point because I think it supremely important in the estimation of Mr. Swinnerton's genius and achievement. He has a powerful and original mind: that is obvious. It is also obvious that, consciously or unconsciously, he has been very much influenced by Mr. Bennett. One might do worse, no doubt, than be influenced by Mr. Bennett, whose mind is indubitably among the most powerful and original of his generation. But the point is that Mr. Swinnerton is too good to be influenced, to that extent, by anybody. It is only when he is writing of a subject with which he is not at home that he puts on the Bennett armour. For his own subject, the depth of rare and intimate emotion, he has a style exquisitely appropriate and individual. The plot of his new novel [The Elder Sister] is simple. Anne and Vera are sisters. They are both utterly in love with Mortimer, who is a handsome, weak, selfish, snivelling cad. (There is nothing improbable in the baseness of Mortimer: Goneril and Regan were naughty girls: and cads are often loved, for the world must be peopled). Mortimer breaks Vera's heart by marrying Anne, and Anne's heart by running away with Vera. That is all. There are a few subordinate characters, lightly but surely touched in—the sisters' "Dad" and "Mum," and their stuffy little home in Kilburn, make a little masterpiece in themselves; and then there is Mr. Sims at Anne's office, and Mr. Harrow at Vera's. But the story is the story of Vera's weak, terrible, seeking, destroying passion, and Anne's difficult but indomitable greatness of heart. It is a beautiful story, beautifully told—told with reticence, with lyrical ardour, with the very exactness of fine sense.