Beginning in the fall of 1920, the Pall Mall Gazette surveyed a number of then-prominent novelists, asking for their views on “The Future of the Novel.” One of those contacted was Dorothy Richardson, then with five volumes of Pilgrimage in print, and her response appears below. After it, remarks from several of her fellow novelists on the impact of Richardson’s own work are quoted.
- Miss Dorothy Richardson:
- All kinds of novels should have, if we keep our balance on the rope, a far wider acceptance, in the immediate future, than ever in the past. If we do not keep our balance, the future of the novel, though wide, is indefinitely remote.
- Romance telling of fairies or demons in the woods, and of giants and pygmies amongst humanity, people we should like or hate to be, willing and acting on a stage that holds our eyes by its size or by its remoteness, or both, will still afford us, in the hands of a master, the vast recreation of vicarious living, expansion of consciousness, ennoblement, or a wholesome despair.
- Realism, substituting ‘nature-study’ for the fairies and demons of the woods, and the average man in average circumstances for the giants and pygmies on the vast stage, has unprecedented opportunities of expansion, since it marches always with the times; its stress being upon environment, whether of circumstance or of given individual character; and its sources—chiefly science, notably the science of psychology—perpetually redescribing character, and the movement of events, perpetually reconstructing environment, were never so active as they are today.
- The third form of the novel, still in its infancy, whose exponents are unable to accept either the demons and fairies of romance or the ‘facts’ of ‘nature-study’ as adequate accounts of the world, and place their emphasis on the individual, whether ‘average’ or exceptional, will continue to hold writer and reader at home in the universal marvel of existence. It may be described either as a reaction from realism, though within it realism finds its fullest aesthetic development, or as a new birth of romance; romance at last become real and brought home to stay. For just as it is realism at its fullest aesthetic development, so also it is romance in its simplest, truest form. Where it reaches its aim, it weaves for the reader the eternal romance of his own existence and demonstrates that aesthetic recreation is to be had not only by going far enough out, but also by coming near enough home. So far, only rough outlines have been drawn. Its first masterpiece will at once reveal the possibilities and confound, as a masterpiece always will confound, exact classification. For the great masters of the early form of romance are also realists, and the few masterpieces of realism are pure romance. It may be that the immediate development of the more recent experiments will produce an old-pattern, three-volume novel with the unities holding sway as never before, in its midst one person, one spot of earth, one moment of time. But the possibilities are various, and as they are worked out the new form will be found to be, not in opposition, but related to, throwing into relief, sometimes amplifying and interpreting, what has gone before.
- Sheila Kaye-Smith:
- I do not think that any modern development, like that of Miss Dorothy Richardson, will survive as a separate expression in literature: it will only survive in so far as it influences the main stream of novel-writing.
- Gradually the author, as commentator and god, is becoming merged into his own creation. The value of new movements does not lie so much in themselves as in their effect upon the main stream of literature; they are not really fundamental but are chiefly concerned with technique. The great interest shown at present in psycho-analysis and kindred subjects is only a passing influence which will leave its trace without causing any revolution.
- Alec Waugh:
- There has been a great deal of discussion about the work of Miss Dorothy Richardson, but good though it is, I do not think it is likely to prove more than a very small by-path in English fiction. The fact that it is a by-path makes it none the less interesting. Miss Richardson is doing a very small thing as well as it could possibly be done, but her methods of the analysis of impressions could only appeal to a small number of writers. One cannot imagine a writer with a big mind and a big range being attracted by them.
- J. D. Beresford:
- To attain an ultimate realism we must drop altogether the detached, observing method; we must not be objective, but subjective. Instead of describing the observed fact we must describe our own reactions to the fact, and so far as may be, exclude from our record the fact itself, that is to say, the fact as it might be seen by the average witness. Two remarkable examples of this method are the Ulysses of James Joyce, and the five volumes of Pilgrimage, by Miss Dorothy Richardson. And I would submit that realism can go no further in this direction.
- I. A. R. Wylie:
- I consider that the reductio ad absurdum of the best authors of the day reaches its climax in the work of Dorothy Richardson. In my opinion her tendency and the influence of the school she represents is fatal to the future of the novel, because the public cannot and will not accept this literary diet and, becoming equally tired of the trash of the “best-seller,” ends by not reading at all.