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187 trenchant, and fairly complete record of scholarship in the last decade that complements Lawrence Evans' work in Victorian Prose (e.d. David DeLaura) and Franklin Court's volume in the ASB Series and takes account of an admittedly select though large number of works. We should all give thanks that Seiler omits many studies representing views of those who do not see the object as in itself it really is, although he has also winnowed out some wheat: readers are rightly directed to the Pater Newsletter for an extensive semi-annual annotated bibliography. Gerald Monsman's introduction is, as always in his writing, superb. His reading of Pater, extensively elaborated in Walter Pater's Art of Autobiography (I98O), provides an interesting and provacative analysis of part of "Hippolytus Veiled" for consideration . The analysis proceeds from a linguistic/poetics base to a deconstructive explication that is highly revealing/unveiling and, nonetheless, suggestive. In all, this is a highly important collection that every student of Pater and most students of Victorian literature and culture should prize. John J. Conion University of Massachusetts (Boston) 4. Two Excellent Assessments of Bennett the Man and the Artist James Hepburn, ed. Sketches for Autobiography by Arnold Bennett (Lond: Allen and Unwin, 1979)¡ James Hepburn, ed. Arnold Bennett: The Critical Heritage (Lond: Routledge and Kegan Paul, I98I). $16.50 Most readers of Arnold Bennett are aware, even without consciously thinking about it, that he was not only an orderly and highly organized individual, but also a fastidious writer who worked deliberately and with repeated success to fulfill the demands of his craft: a popular work, a book review, a serious novel or whatever the current project was. He had, above all, a keen sense of form and a remarkable facility with writing. It is likely that his prodigious output has, as a matter of fact, been a quite significant factor in the continuing disregard of his work by critics, an irony that Bennett himself would .have appreciated. Even his publishers triedto slow him down because they were apprehensive that such productivity could and would be used against him. Not surprisingly, a frequent charge made against him was that he wrote potboilers. The argument that any writer who is prolific can be no better than a popular writer is patently illogical, but has anyone ever claimed that critics really needed to pay undue attention to the constrictions of logic. In response to his critics (the novel under consideration is Lilian) Bennett pointed out that the term "potboiler" is used correctly to describe a work written expressly and solely for money; whereas most writers write for money, "serious writers do not write solely for money. Serious writers produce the best work they can, and hope to make a living out of it" (Critical Heritage, pp. 408-9). Had he wanted to write a potboiler, Bennett remarked hé could have 188 easily done so with less expenditure of effort and greater profit, but, instead, he wanted to write Lilian. Admittedly, Bennett could and did write potboilers with ease; he also wrote at least seven novels that warrant serious consideration as the work of a major Edwardian novelist. Some have found it difficult to reconcile these very different facets of Bennett's writings and have accordingly found it easier to lump everything together as journalism, not art. His own creed - "I never write on a subject which does not interest me, and I always write as well as heaven permits" (Critical Heritage, p. 7) - sustains the conclusion that he was a serious, conscientious writer, and it is as a serious writer worthy of sober, informed consideration that James Hepburn presents Bennett in these two volumes. The original reviewer for these volumes was to be H. E. Gerber; he had already made some preliminary notes when he died unexpectedly. Although these remarks and notes are fragmentary and not as polished as they would have been by publication time, I should like to include his comments as part of this review because his critical judgments were invariably perceptive and because I should like their inclusion to serve as a quiet tribute to his memory. Gerber wrote as follows: In this volume the...

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