SOURCE: “The Novel,” in The Catholic Literary Revival: Three Phases in its Development from 1845 to the Present, The Bruce Publishing Co., 1935, pp. 233-396.

In the following excerpt, Alexander considers Mackenzie and Sheila Kaye-Smith as Catholic novelists.

There is a suggestion of the absurd in choosing, as those who best represent the novel on its promising side, two authors who for more than a decade have occupied undisputed places in the first rank of English novelists. No one today looks upon Compton Mackenzie or Sheila Kaye-Smith as just “promising” novelists. No one except Catholics, who do so not because they are unappreciative of their genius or unaware of the several artistic triumphs each of these converts has to his credit. Rather it is their awareness of this that makes them regard them as supremely fitted to attempt something quite different and of a higher order than they have yet...