Compton Mackenzie was one of the most prolific British authors of the twentieth century. His first book was published when he was in his mid-twenties and his last when he was nearly ninety. In fact, b...
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As an essayist Compton Mackenzie cultivated a tradition going back to Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon, of flights of introspective and descriptive writing, often autobiographical in focus, with ...
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In the following review, Cooper praises the wealth of cultural and sociological information found in Sinister Street.
Arnold Bennett recently wrote, “the older I grow, the less attention I pay ...
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In the following essay, Newman discusses the critical reaction to Mackenzie's work.
When Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald was twenty-one and his literary taste was yet unformed, he had a marked admirati...
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In the following essay, Johnson considers Mackenzie as a romantic and a realist.
Modern criticism has decided that, for all his outspoken revelations of the underworld, Mr Compton Mackenzie is essenti...
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In the following derogatory review of The Seven Ages of Woman, Krutch asserts that Mackenzie has “no philosophy to give significance to his work and no depths in himself to be moved, for he inh...
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In the following essay, Adcock offers a brief overview of Mackenzie's life and career.
From a literary and dramatic point of view, Compton Mackenzie may almost be said to have been born in the ...
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In the following essay, Wright contends that the humor in The Parson's Progress “will save it for the unimaginative people who are bored by its ecclesiasticism, and the long-faced people...
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In the following essay, Doane traces Mackenzie's stylistic maturation as evinced in his fiction.
In this short study of the earlier work of Mr. Compton Mackenzie let us judge according to his o...
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In the following excerpt, Cunliffe examines Mackenzie's use of realistic details in his early novels.
Compton Mackenzie, whose parents were well known and highly esteemed under their stage name...
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In the following excerpt, Alexander considers Mackenzie and Sheila Kaye-Smith as Catholic novelists.
There is a suggestion of the absurd in choosing, as those who best represent the novel on its promi...
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In the following favorable review of The East Wind of Love, Quennell asserts that although the novel is too long, it is “decidedly readable.”
In the list of books that have influenced on...
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In the following essay, Robertson explores the main features of Mackenzie's religious trilogy—The Altar Steps, The Parson's Progress, and The Heavenly Ladder.
In 1922 Compton Mack...
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In the following favorable review of Plashers Mead, [published as Guy and Pauline, Hale asserts that the story is “so entirely fused in the imagination that it makes its impression definitely a...
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In the following favorable review, originally published in June 1956, Waugh asserts that Mackenzie “gently and wisely expounds the deterioration of a human character” in Thin Ice.
For fo...
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In the following positive review of Thin Ice, Bowen deems the novel as an “extremely sympathetic history of an important homosexual in British public life written by a close family friend who i...
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In the following interview, Mackenzie discusses his childhood, his education, and the impact of World War I on his writing.
[Freeman:] Sir Compton Mackenzie, in the course of a long life you have been...
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In the following essay, Richardson commends the personal recollections and tales of courage collected in Mackenzie's On Moral Courage.
Oughtn't it, perhaps, to be mental courage, as the ...
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In the following essay, Young offers a biographical and critical overview of Mackenzie's life and work.
I
It may seem superfluous, if not a presumption, to write about the life of Sir Compton M...
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In the following obituary, Hollis provides personal reminiscences as well as a brief biography of Mackenzie's life.
Few among Monty Mackenzie's innumerable friends and acquaintances woul...
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In the following essay, Dooley examines the subject matter of Mackenzie's satirical, topical novels.
A traditional function of the writer of fiction has been to throw new light on questions of ...
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In the following favorable review of Water on the Brain, Green praises the relevance and topicality of Mackenzie's novel.
The republication of Water on the Brain could not have come at a more c...
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In the following excerpt, Hart considers the melodramatic story line of Mackenzie's The Four Winds of Love.
When Compton Mackenzie began publishing The Four Winds of Love in 1937, he had alread...
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In the following review of Andro Linklater's biography of Mackenzie, Bayley reflects on Mackenzie's intriguing life.
Staying at about the age of eleven with a friend whose father was a d...
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In the following review, Woolf maintains that the characters in The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett are better-suited for films than for fiction.
When we say that the adventures of Sylvia...
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In the following assessment of Andro Linklater's biography of Mackenzie, Mangan surveys Mackenzie's life and literary output.
During the First World War, when Compton Mackenzie's ...
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In the following essay, Masters recounts Mackenzie's espionage activities in Greece, his trial for revealing sensitive intelligence information, and publication of his “revenge” n...
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In the following essay, Orel evaluates the major strengths and flaws of The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett and concludes that “the incidental pleasures and the overall readability...
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In the following review, Hackett contends that The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett is full of cheap puns and slapstick and exhibits a lack of didacticism.
For a long time the best novelis...
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In the following negative assessment of Sylvia and Michael, Woolf deems the novel boring.
The feat that no reviewer of Mr. Mackenzie's books can possibly attempt is to explain even in the most ...
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In the following essay, West offers a favorable review of Sylvia and Michael.
This sequel to Sylvia Scarlett [Sylvia and Michael]—or rather this concluding half of Sylvia Scarlett which the pub...
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In the following review, West traces Mackenzie's improvement as an author and describes Poor Relations as “a coherent and beautiful farce.”
It was not that one really disliked Mr....
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In the following excerpt, Goldring places Mackenzie within the context of two other popular British novelists, Hugh Walpole and Gilbert Cannan.
If the ordinary circulating library subscriber were aske...
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In the following essay, Mais evaluates the flaws and strengths of Mackenzie's fiction.
In Sylvia Scarlett Compton Mackenzie carries on his Balzac scheme of economical selection by continuing th...
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Critical Essay by Cuthbert Wright
"Sinister Street" is the second and final volume of that study in adolescence of which "Youth's Encounter" was the prologue…...
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Critical Essay by V. S. Pritchett
Mr. Compton Mackenzie's novel [The Four Winds of Love], when he has gone round the weathercock, will be in four volumes. [The South Wind of Love] is the second...
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Critical Essay by George Dangerfield
I cannot help thinking that "Again to the North" is a somewhat unnecessary book. It is an example of what Coleridge called the cacoethes notandi. It ...
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Critical Essay by Stewart F. Sanderson
Complex in design and teeming with ideas, [The Four Winds of Love] is perhaps [Sir Compton Mackenzie's] greatest achievement as a novelist, and certainly ...
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Critical Essay by J.i.m. Stewart
Water on the Brain is a squib that in places is very funny indeed. It is also entirely unambitious, since loaded with nonsense reducing it well below the level of sati...
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Critical Essay by Benny Green
The fate of Sinister Street is unique in that its virtues as a novel have been overshadowed by its accidental status as a germinating influence on a more solemnly regarde...
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Compton (Edward Montague) Mackenzie
