SOURCE: “Books and Authors,” in Prairie Schooner, Vol. 1, No. 2, April, 1927, pp. 170-79.

In the following essay, Doane traces Mackenzie's stylistic maturation as evinced in his fiction.

In this short study of the earlier work of Mr. Compton Mackenzie let us judge according to his own criteria. Speaking before the Poets' Club of London in 1912, he made this statement: “Poetry, for me, is the quintessence of life displayed and preserved in a reliquary of beautiful words … [and] life consists of action, emotion and thought, together with their corollaries of experience, tranquility and contemplation, against a background of human beauty. To me great beauty seems to happen when a perfection of utterance or expression completely coincides with the capacity for experience, the sense of tranquility and the power of contemplation.” By this he would convey the impression that poetry—that is, poetry as differentiated from verse—is merely the meaning...