SOURCE: "Art versus Ideology: The Case of L. H. Myers," in The Cambridge Quarterly, Vol. VI, No. 3, 1975, pp. 214-40.

In the following excerpt, Grant attempts to explain how Myers's novels, widely acclaimed during the thirties, have become unfamiliar to most contemporary readers.

To most modern readers the novelist L. H. Myers is little more than a name. The novels are unread; and apart from a well-known dictum about the 'spiritual vulgarity' of the age, his sole memorials are by other hands: a handful of reviews, the odd footnote, a few brief if appreciative mentions in literary histories, and a couple of short books. Yet he was a serious novelist of the inter-war years, uniquely acclaimed by highbrow criticism and the general public alike: his 'success' in conventional terms (which he always played down) probably exceeded that of any contemporary of similar calibre: his major work, the trilogy The...