Publishers’ advertisements of imaginative work are so constantly curious that one gets accustomed to their bizarre qualities and refrains from comment.  But Messrs. Hutchinson, who are evidently rather proud of having secured Lucas Malet’s new long novel, have thought of a new adjective, and the event must be chronicled.  They are announcing to the world that Lucas Malet’s new novel is “literary”—­“the literary novel of the autumn.”  I cannot be quite sure what this means, but it is probably intended to signify that, in the opinion of Messrs. Hutchinson, Lucas Malet’s novel is very special—­that is to say, it is not a mere novel.  Less adroit publishers than Messrs. Hutchinson might have described it as an “art novel.” (Cf. “art furniture,” all up Tottenham Court Road.) Some of the most esteemed provincial dailies have a column headed “Literature” on five days of the week, but on the sixth day that column is headed “New Fiction.”  You see the distinction.  Messrs. Hutchinson are doubtless hinting to the provinces that the new book is something between “literature” and “fiction,” and combines the superior attributes of both.  Once the Athenaeum, apparently staggered by the discovery that Joseph Conrad existed, reviewed a novel of his under the rubric of “Literature,” instead of with other novels under the rubric of “Fiction.”  Messrs. Hutchinson have possibly an eye also on the Athenaeum.  Personally, I would not permit my publishers to advertise a novel of mine as literary.  But on the whole I wouldn’t seriously object to the adjective “unliterary.”

INDEX

Academies, French and British, 81
Academy, the British, 228-234
Academy, the, under the editorship of Mr. Hind, 4, 19;
  under other controls, 38, 64
Advertisements, 300
Agents, literary, 22, 72
Aid, State, for the artist, 319
Albert, Henri, 78
Alexander, Sir George, 63
American postal censorship, 193
Anderson, Sir Robert, 193
Andreief, Leonide, 224
Anglo-Saxon, the, 243
Anthologies, 5
Antoine, director of the Odeon, 257, 259
Apoutkine, 225
Archer, William, 140
Aristophanes, 54
Arnold, Matthew, 19, 268
Art, the theory of, 283, 284
“Art of the short story,” the, 86
“Artifex” reviews the Letters of Queen Victoria, 12
Artists, creative, 13, 158, 228
  and critics, 158
  as critics, 158, 283
  and money, 242, 250-254
Asquith, H.H., 302
Athenaeum, the, 68, 71;
  its review of “A Set of Six,” 36, 332
Audoux, Marguerite, 305
Austin, Alfred, 325
Author, the, 130
Author, the, and the publisher, 13, 16, 17, 22, 33, 71, 204
Authors and gift-books, 68
Authors’ Society, the, 130, 171, 233, 277, 291
Autobiography in fiction, 295
Ayscough, John, 28