Ivy Compton-Burnett seems to be one of the undoubted classics to have emerged from the modern period. (p. 25)

Like anyone else, she had to learn her craft by experience, and her first book, Dolores (1911), is a dolorous thing indeed. It is stolid, conventional, without the imprint of Ivy's own peculiar nature. It could have been written by a dozen other beginners in the field of fiction. Time passed by until 1925 when Pastors and Masters appeared before the public. It, also, is not really vintage Ivy and is distinctly a minor work, but the book has the Ivy quality—the dry dialogue, the probing for secret motivations, the revelation of man's evil in the average mind, and, above all, an aphoristic turn of phrase. From then on Ivy is the wielder of the scalpel, the feared investigator of secret crime. (p. 26)

Reading a novel of Ivy's, one gets the...