Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/25

 *cess. It was only with the publication of "Barabbas" and the distinctly unfair comments that book received, that she at last threw down the gauntlet, and forbade her publishers to send out any more of her books for review.

This action practically put an end to the discussion of her works in the literary journals by critics with warped ideas of fair play. For they failed to remember that, though his draftsmanship may here and there display a flaw, an artist should be judged by the conception of his design—by his coloring—by the intention of his work as a whole.

Five years have elapsed since the one-sided truce was called; those critics, wandering by the bookshops, see people issuing therefrom bearing in their hands the hated volumes—the brain-children of the woman who had met them in unequal combat. They read in the papers of the gigantic sales of these works; they lift their hands in horror, and sigh for the gone days of authors who appealed but to the cultured few. So waggeth the world of letters; so arriveth that person to be trampled on—offend he or she the critics by ever so little—the New Writer.

It is manifestly unfair that a novelist should criticise novels; yet this is frequently done. It goes without saying that the novelist who devotes