Martin Donisthorpe Armstrong, a writer of some renown in England for nearly three decades, published widely in a variety of forms: poetry, novels, short stories, children's fiction, literary criticism, and radio scripts. Although he devoted much of the early part of his career to poetry, playing a central role in the Georgian poetry movement in the 1920s, Armstrong turned to fiction in 1925. His dozen novels, his most substantial accomplishment as an artist, are written in the Edwardian tradition of John Galsworthy and Arnold Bennett and portray the upper-middle-class society into which Armstrong was born. These characters often reflect the class values that Armstrong espoused: respect for justice and tradition, love of the countryside, and concern for harmonious relationships between the sexes. At the same time Armstrong's novels assault the upper-class values that he deplored: snobbery, materialism, and indifference. These conflicting elements forge a kind of novel of manners...