Charlotte Mitchell

This is an academic monograph on Saki’s literary work, which does not pretend to add much to the work of his biographers, but summarises and quotes lavishly from the evidence available about his short and rather secret life. It begins with the miserable childhood and the odious aunts and ends with his death aged 44 at the hands of a German sniper at Beaumont Hamel in 1916. Its ten chapters include four which focus mainly on the fiction, but the other chapters, which are mainly biographical and arranged more or less chronologically, also include copious references to his writings. Like most of Saki’s fans, Professor Byrne is curious about his life, which is badly documented and enigmatic.

The regional novel in England sounds like a dull and worthy research topic; investigating it might be entertaining at times, but I suspect that one would just end by concluding that it existed once, and does so no more. People still write novels about life in various regions, of course; some writers still specialise in a particular area, but the glory days are over. When Cold Comfort Farm came out in 1932 to deal it a death-blow, there were still dozens of writers making an honest living in this way; it is often said to mock Mary Webb’s books, but Sheila Kaye-Smith, Eden Phillpotts, Alice Dudeney and many others were just as vulnerable.

Jonathan Bate, the general editor of this series, which replaces the Oxford History of English Literature, announces in a preface how exceptionally difficult it is to write literary history at all in modern times. As the slightly awkward new title of the series suggests, there is all that American, Scots, Welsh and Irish stuff now. They need more than the odd chapter, so away with them. Hundreds of dead women writers are now actually in print who were formerly unheard of. Distinctions between high and low culture have collapsed. Competing theoretical approaches raise terrible anxieties. Evaluation itself is under threat. So the task of writing the history of Eng. Lit.