SOURCE: "Chapter XVII," in Conversations in Ebury Street, Chatto & Windus, 1969, pp. 211-23.

In the following excerpt of a literary conversation originally published in 1924, Moore calls Agnes Grey "the most perfect prose narrative in English literature" and goes on to describe the story.

MOORE. … If Anne had written nothing but The Tenant of Wildfell Hall I should not have been able to predict the high place she would have taken in English letters. All I should have been able to say is: An inspiration that comes and goes like a dream. But, her first story, Agnes Grey, is the most perfect prose narrative in English literature. GOSSE. The most perfect prose narrative in English literature, and overlooked for fifty-old years! MOORE. The blindness of criticism should not surprise one as well acquainted with the history of literature as you are. You have noticed, no doubt, that...