Ethel M. Kelley

"She May Very Probably Write a Great Novel"

The lady writers of the U. S. have been able to develop care and style in their craft more expertly than most of the gentlemen. Why this is true, I don't know. Perhaps America requires too strenuous a life of its men to permit of their becoming properly educated. Perhaps they are by nature careless of technique. So many times our young men have stories to tell and do so with superb effect yet without any real attempt at construction or beauty of language. It is to the lady novelists, then, that we turn for the lacery of writing. They do not disappoint us. Among the men, true, we have our Joseph Hergesheimers and Thomas Beers who are not neglectful of the mot precis; but it takes Edith : Wharton, Willa Gather, Agnes Repplier, Katherine Fullerton Gerould and a score more like them to preserve carefully the manipulation of the mother tongue in America. To this group more and more clearly belongs Ethel M. Kelley. To her present position as a novelist she has come through various pinafore lengths. She wrote children's books and good but slightly conventional lyrics; she edited magazines; she quietly became a member of the intellectual crowd which centers around Manhattan's colyumists. From New England, she let her detached and somewhat amused intolerance develop into a still detached but nevertheless real tolerance. She wrote a novel cabled Beauty and Mary Blair which was pretty good. Then she wrote a novel, Heart's Blood, which was very good--and her new book, Wings, is even better. She is a good example of the persistent development of a fine writer. Having achieved the ability to manage words skilfully and to develop character with precision, there is no reason why she should not continue to give us good novels. When some fine and flaming passion shoots through her work, as it well might, she may very probably write a great novel. At any rate, here is another American woman of whom we may well be proud. J. F.