SOURCE: "E. M. Delafield," in Some Contemporary Novelists (Women), Leonard Parsons, 1920, pp. 177-84.

In the following essay, Johnson discusses egoism and the sense of self portrayed in Delafield's female protagonists.

There is a certain competent serenity about Miss Delafield's work which excludes her, perhaps, from the ranks of those who are—rather aggressively "new" in their manner. Though actually a "war-product" and, in one novel at least, humourously intent upon the lighter psychology of war, she does not—like most of her contemporaries—write with the new subtlety of analysis, from the soul outwards. Like the conventional novelist she relates, while they speak. Her four stories are observed, composed, and presented in the normal manner of fiction: where the author permits herself to see inside all her characters—as one cannot in real life. They are not the actual utterances of one tortured soul, who can only interpret...