Better-known as a poet than as a novelist, Walter de la Mare nonetheless managed to craft several intriguing narratives that explore the conflict between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Despite the various labels attached to de la Mare--neoromantic and supernaturalist among them--his novels continue to defy academic categorization. Ignoring or dismissing the central tenets of the modernist movement developing around him, de la Mare carved for himself a niche in fiction that won the admiration of such luminaries as T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and Virginia Woolf. After an initial foray into romance, de la Mare concentrated on the tensions that occur between individuals and their stifling social environments. In characters such as Arthur Lawford, Miss M., and Cecil Jennings, de la Mare painted delicate portraits of souls in flux; all three characters, each possessed of a mental or physical "abnormality," experience a mental awakening and attempt...