SOURCE: “Sylvia and Michael,” in New Republic, Vol. 19, No. 237, May 17, 1919, p. 91.

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 publisher's regard for the limited weight-lifting powers of the average library subscriber has led him to issue separately—is by far the best thing Mr. Compton Mackenzie has done since Carnival. It gives scope to his gift for the vivacious rendering of quaint idioms and the recording of picturesque incongruities; and that is a very real gift and one which is to be welcomed in this generation of earnest workers in monotone. For there is at present loose among people who write not out of any urgent personal impulse but according to literary fashion a belief, a quite fallacious belief, that if one keeps to neutral...