Although John Davys Beresford wrote more than sixty books, many of which received respectful reviews from contemporary reviewers, he is today virtually forgotten, with only his early fantastic fiction preserving his memory from complete extinction. This general neglect is not entirely undeserved, for Beresford was notably uneven as a writer. Similar characters and themes appeared in many of his novels, but worse than this repetition was his habit of permitting his enthusiasms and obsessions to dominate his fiction to the point where narration and characters were subverted, the narrative becoming a tract presenting a right-thinking individual contending with oppositional straw men before emerging victorious and vindicated. Despite these flaws, he wrote several intelligent, original, and insightful novels that remain vital and relevant to modern readers. Although he was not a particularly profound thinker, he read heavily in H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw, letting their observations inspire him, and his best work thus often contains acute social commentary.
