Mary Churchill Humphrey, “The Changing English Novel.” Virginia Quarterly Review. Vol. 4, 
1928, pp.119-129.

THE CHANGING ENGLISH NOVEL

BY MARY CHURCHILL HUMPHREY

IF MR. WELLS had not written in his Preface Dedicatory 
to “Meanwhile” that a lady sitting in a celebrated
garden near Ventimiglia “became that remembered and
reinforced personality mingled with my thoughts”—while
the garden itself became “merely the inspiring point of departure 
for this fantasia of ideas,” one would have thought
the whole work capable of being a product of his fertile
imagination. It would have been much simpler for the
reader, and certainly much less fatiguing to Mr. Wells, had

Meanwhile. By H. G. Wells. New York: George H. Doran Company. $2.00
Right Off the Map. By C. E. Montague. Garden City: Doubleday, Page &
Co. $2.50.
Gallions Reach. By H. M. Tomlinson. New York: Harper & Brothers. $2.50.
The Panther. By Gerald Bullett. New York: George H. Doran Company.
$2.00
To the Lighthouse. By Virginia Woolf. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.
$2.50.