Shorter Notices
The Unacknowledged Legislator. By Bonamy Dobree. P.E.N. Books. (Allen and Unwin. 2s.) " I LIKE talks about Literature," says a participant of this little symposium in a Warden's Post, " they bother one rather, but they sometimes clear one's mind." It is difficult to think exactly who would be bothered or mentally purged by this discussion, for the thirties saw a glut of similar and more seal-Jelling arguments about the novelist's relation to the social background of his time. Writers generally choose their cwn appropriate material without such advice, and seem less bothered than their commentators by the supposed autonomy of describing the individual soul or its social milieu. Perhaps it is meant for export, to show our argumentative democracy hammering out its problems between the bombs. Anyway, here we have Prothero the near-Marxist, Milward who claims the novelist's right " to deal with the eternal, with the emotions that affect humanity whatever age they live in," the conciliatory Mrs. Burrows—" I am a woman and therefore practical "—who likes Love on the Dole and The Grapes of Wrath, and points out that nearly all novelists are moralists, and finally the frivolous Mr. Brown, who " never before realised that jolly books really meant anything." A galaxy of writers from Milton to Benda are pressed into the service of the varioui conclusions, which are all sensible if unstartling. Mr. Dobree's writing is always accomplished, and this short lively book would prove stimulating.to a sixth form debating society.
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