Two styles seem to be the peculiarity of the historical novel of to-day; the biographical, with a psychological strain (Maurois, Emil Ludwig, and Werfel in his Verdi), and especially the new historical novel which does not restrict itself to portraying, in the form of a sensational anecdote, an individual drawn more or less graphically after the person of the author, but in which the characters are embedded in the environment of their period, in which is traced an outline of the structure of the times. The author of this new historical novel does not lay stress on the colour of a period, but on its substance. He does not care for what is curious and strange, does not seek to emphasize the romantic. He does not underline those qualities which mark the distance between those times and our own, but preserving his torical reality, he underlines the very qualities which are common to our own time (Feuchtwanger's Jew Suss and The Ugly Duchess). In this way does he trace unchanging man through the everchanging periods of history and endeavours to transform history into politics.
This sociological novel develops the novel of environment of the 19th century, as it culminated in Zola, and changes it from within. For while that naturalistic novel constructed its setting from single events carefully put together so as to cause suspense, the modern post-war sociological novel endeavours to compre hend in one glance the whole class which it portrays. It has
learnt much from the films, in particular the technique of build ing up a comprehensive picture from many small individual pic tures. (Thus, for instance, Dos Passos, in his Manhattan Transfer, intentionally—after the manner of the films—rings the changes between a "close-up" of the individual and a general view of the crowd, showing the simultaneousness of many events in order to give a better view of the events as a whole.) In logical transi tion between the Zolaesque novel and the sociological novel of to-day stand novels such as Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto, The Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann, and Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga. The sociological novels of the times, the works of Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, Dos Passos, the books of Gladkov and Kollontai, the prose epics of Bennett, Galsworthy and Wells, take for their subject-matter not one arbitrary indi vidual, but the whole society of to-day. It is for that reason that, notwithstanding the attractions of sport and wireless, they have won the entire world of to-day as their ardent readers, a somewhat superficial world, perhaps, but certainly a very enlightened one. Their works teach their readers to understand and to sympathize with the life of the citizen, and disclose the outlook of the proletariat. They impart a knowledge of those two opposite poles, Russia and America. And Russians and Anglo-Saxons have proved themselves masters of this form of novel, dislodging the French novel without a struggle. This new sociological fiction has converted the novel from a luxury for the idle rich into a necessity for busy workers. For it originates, not from the need for self-expression of a single arbitrary author, but from a uni versal need for self-expression. (L. F.)