Excerpt from Privilege: A Novel of the Transition
When this book appeared in England, I prefixed a brief note disclaiming any idea on my part of having written a "probable" story. By this I laid no claim to the creation of fantasy. Indeed, fantastical fiction even at its best, falls short of perfection in that it lacks one of the three essentials to the true novel as I conceive it. These essentials are plot, characterization, and period psychology. The story must hold attention by its incident; the imaginary society to which the reader is introduced must consist of individuals of coherent personality; the affinity of that society to the age in which it is supposed to exist must be recognizable. My attempt to explain that Privilege does not pretend to detailed actuality but rests, nevertheless, on a basis of motivation proper to its contemporary setting was in many quarters misunderstood. Because in the United States more study is devoted than in England to the history and development of literary forms, I hope for my readers' indulgence in an attempt to indicate briefly where Privilege departs from the present day fashion in novels and why it does so.
The epithets of literary criticism are dangerous playthings. If I say that this is a "romantic" novel, I use a word of which no two definitions are the same.
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