SOURCE: “Three Georgian Novelists,” in Reputations: Essays in Criticism, Chapman & Hall, 1920, pp. 39-63.

In the following excerpt, Goldring places Mackenzie within the context of two other popular British novelists, Hugh Walpole and Gilbert Cannan.

If the ordinary circulating library subscriber were asked for the names of the three English novelists still under forty who have most definitely “arrived,” ten to one he (or she) would mention Mr. Compton Mackenzie, Mr. Hugh Walpole and Mr. Gilbert Cannan. The success of this triumvirate when—their apprenticeship served—they assembled under the banner of Mr. Martin Secker to make their respective bids for fame, was immediate, and in some ways perhaps unprecedented. For theirs was not merely a success of vulgar popularity, it was a succès d'estime as well. Novel readers who borrowed the works of these writers from their libraries felt that they were not quite as other novel...