Excerpt from Some English Story Tellers a Book of the Younger Novelists As in the case of Some American Story Tellers, the title of the present volume has been deliberately chosen, in order to place the various types of modern writers of fiction more or less on a level, as primarily public entertainers, whose first duty is to hold public attention with the spell of the spoken word. There is no intention to minimize, by the use of this title, the high function that fiction is tending more and more to play as a criticism of contemporary manners and ethics; but it does permit of a more indulgent attitude towards such writers as take their responsibilities more lightly, and to recognize that, within its class and in view of its author's purpose, Anthony Hope's Dolly Dialogues is as finished a piece of story-telling as Arnold Bennett's Old Wives' Tale. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.