Compton Mackenzie Critical Essay | Critical Review by Virginia Woolf

Critical Review by Virginia Woolf

SOURCE: “The ‘Movie’ Novel,” in Times Literary Supplement, August 29, 1918, p. 403.

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 Scarlett are much more interesting than Sylvia Scarlett herself, we are recommending the book [The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett] to half the reading public and condemning it in the eyes of the other half. There are people who require the heroines of their novels to be interesting, and they know by experience that the adventurous heroine is apt to be as dull in fiction as she is in life. It is true that adventurers are not dull in the ordinary sense of the word; they are monotonous, self-centred, serious, rather than dull. They have spun all their substance into adventure, and...
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