My Contemporaries In Fiction

This book is a great fiction. Among the chapters in this 1897 collection are First, the Critics, and then a Word on Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Living Masters—Rudyard Kipling, Dr. Macdonald and Mr. J. M. Barrie, and The Americans. Murray feared he would be ridiculed for the book, but instead gained literary friends (and praise) as a result of its publication. But before we part for the time being, let me offer the uncritical reader one valuable touchstone. Let him recall the stories he has read, say, five years ago. If he can find a live man or woman anywhere amongst his memories, who is still as a friend or an enemy to him, he has, fifty to one, read a sterling book. Dickens' people stand this test with all readers, whether they admire him or no. Even when they are grotesque they are alive. They live in the memory even of the careless like real people. And this is the one unfailing trial by which great fiction may be known.