[In the following excerpt, originally published in The Academy in 1894, Johnson reviews Marcella.]

That Marcella is a good novel, and a very much better novel than Robert Eismere or David Grieve, would seem to be the unanimous verdict of its readers. It may be not amiss to consider the reasons of this clear superiority to its predecessors.

Mrs Humphry Ward, in a quaint preface to David Grieve, defended with great energy her choice of theme and treatment in that book, and in Robert Elsmere. Undoubtedly fiction in prose has been successfully written with so infinite a variety of aims and ideals, written so lightly and loosely, so sternly and strictly, so waywardly and airily, so straightforwardly and precisely, that it is impossible to say what is or is not a novel: what a novel may or may not contain. But one thing is certain. If a novel be...