1. J.D. Beresford gives a survey and evaluation of current literature pieces by various authors, such as D.H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley, while exemplifying Bennett's work.

J. D. Beresford. "Some Autumn Novels." The Nation and Athenaeum 34 (December 8, 1923): 403-404. annotated bibliography: Beresford first devotes his time to the praise of Bennett. He writes: ?I began with three novels that fell into a category by reason of a likeness of background?Mr. Bennett, who deserves first place ?apart from his reputation ?for the perfect sureness of his handling, has taken us to Clerkenwell in ?Riceyman Steps,? just off the King's Cross Road, and has given depth to his background by his feeling for its history. He does not permit us to forget that this smoke-begrimed, barren timber of modern Clerkenwell was once a living tree. And his story?may be read as the last outstanding writing on the master-craftsman. Regard it without too close a scrutiny and you will notice that he has chosen to set it out, not on a clean sheet, but on a material that gives depth to the whole composition.? And when evaluating another writer's work (Sheila Kaye-Smith's), Beresford exemplifies Bennett's work, as he states, ?This last book of hers is definitely an achievement, [with] a professional touch about its management and arrangement which puts her ?and her alone among the authors here treated ?into the same class of practiced craftsmanship as Arnold Bennett.?

2. J.D. Beresford defends Bennett against Woolf by comparing Bennett's work to that of Charles Dickens.

J. D. Beresford. "The Successors of Charles Dickens." The Nation and Athenaeum 34 (December 29, 1923): 487-488. annotated bibliography: Woolf, in ?Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,? wrote that the three Edwardians (Wells, Galsworthy, and Bennett) fail as important novelists due to their inability to create character in the manner of Dickens and Thackeray. Beresford argues that Bennett's work appears to be different from Dickens's only because his characters are more subtle, more suggestive and complex than those easily discernible, exaggerated characters of Dickens. Beresford points out that the ?average mind? will remember someone like Pip or Mrs. Dickleby, because they fall neatly into cartoon-like ?types? of beings, whereas the ?average mind? will forget someone like Sophia Baines (one of Bennett's characters) because she is more subtle, more recognizable to the reflective mind. Much like Dickens, Bennett writes for his own day and age. And what are the readers like in Dickens and Bennett's time? According to Beresford, Dickensonian era consisted of ?stock characters,? with their ?stock reactions to religion, politics, and society.? Those were the people who would have gone straight to a Dickens novel, for his characters were much like them, with obvious, exaggerated traits. Edwardian readers, however, have changed in their self-awareness ?they have become more complex, ?more diverse and introspective,? writes Beresford. They can no longer be so easily classified into Dickensonian ?types.? Thus, Beresford feels, the only crime Bennett is guilty of is writing for the readers of the late nineteenth century, readers who are more self-conscious, more subtle and complex. Thus, in response to Woolf, Beresford believes that these characteristics are, of course, not conducive to long-term memory but require a finer taste to appreciate. The most salient point in Beresford argument is placed in the last paragraph, where he writes: "If we admit this growing change due to the evolution of consciousness, shall we say that the art of Wells, Galsworthy, or Bennett is of a lower order of achievement than that of Dickens or Thackeary, because our selected trio have presented us with a characterization that is truer to our own day than the depicting of the older type. Has not, for example, Mr. Bennett fully justified his dictum in his own work? Are his character-creating powers less than those of Dickens because they are more subtle? And, finally, is not the failure, such as it is, with those of us who are still in that condition in which we prefer Pip, Squeak, and Wilfred to the Red Queen??I await the verdict."

3. "First Catch Your Hare," by Pearsall Smith, is an essay about capturing the quintessential quality of fiction.

Smith, Pearsall. "First Catch Your Hare." The Nation and Athenaeum 35 (February, 1924): 629-630. annotated bibliography: Smith recognizes that Virginia Woolf and Arnold Bennett have inaugurated a hunt for the key quality that makes masterpiece novels. Though Woolf and Bennett heatedly argue for their own methods of producing fiction, they both agree on "character-creation" as the most important aspect of an enduring novel. Smith does not side with either writer, but he proposes a different view of character-creation --that it is not the ultimate solution to writing a masterpiece but only one of the significant factors in determining a novel?s success. In developing this thesis, he first defines character-creation itself. According to Smith, character-creation is in the works of certain great writers who present more than just personifications of the passions or idealizations of the average heroes, lovers, villains, lords, misers, millionaires, clergymen, lawyers, or doctors, but they produce figures who seem to be framed in a manner and appearance resembling real human beings, who were no sooner brought into existence than they seem to have always existed. And how do these great novelists achieve this? By writing in such a way that the reader knows the unforeseen, the unsaid, the unportrayed but inferred aspects of a character. ?When the novel is closed, or the curtain falls upon the dram, they go on living in our imaginations, and are as familiar to us as our relations and our best-acquainted friends,? writes Smith. He thus provides readers a sense of what he thinks of character-creation apart from the opinions of Woolf and Bennett.

However, after his long analysis of character-creation, he goes on to say that character-creation may not be the only "hare" that is worth catching, that it is not the single essential ingredient to a novel or drama. "How can we say that other qualities, non-esthetic in themselves, do not acquire an intrinsic art-value when they combine with the essential quality [possibly character-creation], in as it were, a kind of chemical combination?" asks Smith. Smith then gives examples in Greek drama, French and Russian literature (Proust, Balzac, etc.) to back up his point on the necessity of a "chemical combination" to create the ultimate masterpiece. Smith concludes his essay with a quote by a foreign author, which essentially says that the "hare" of Bennett and Woolf is indigenous and confined to English meadows, but the "hare" of wider continental literature lives on grander mountain ranges. Thus, smith encourages writers to broaden their minds and to look deeper than just "character-creation."

4. Feiron Morris writes that Woolf has made a very clever and able argument upon a thesis which he believes is wrong.

Morris, Feiron. "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown. By Virginia Woolf." The Criterion (January, 1925): 326-329 annotated bibliography: Feiron writes that Woolf has made a very clever and able argument upon a thesis which he believes is wrong. Feiron Morris notes that Woolf convinces most readers to agree with her point of view by contrasting Bennett?s work with that of literary masters such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (especially when coupled with her ?powers of style and persuasion," backed with prestige). Though Woolf sharply distinguishes her Mrs. Brown from that of Bennett, Feiron feels Woof?s Mrs. Brown isn?t any more "real" than Bennett?s. In fact, he does not understand how Mrs. Brown is related to the creation of character. Yes, Woolf says that the Mrs. Brown of Bennett is entirely made up of "external facts," but Feiron makes the argument that if one observes enough facts, one reaches the character itself (therefore Hilda Lessways is real). Feiron believes that the goal the modern age is to find reality ?the most ?barren, elementary stripped reality." And how do modernists do find it? Through the symbolic figure. And according to ?modern eyes,? writes Feiron, Mrs. Brown does not stand the test of reality; she is just a creature of fancy and would evaporate into thin air long before the Richmond train reached Waterloo.

Indeed, after one reads Woolf?s essay, one has the impression that "there ain?t no such person," says Feiron. Mrs. Brown is a only a romantic creature ??tragic, heroic, yet with a dash of the flighty and fantastic,? but then so is Don Quixote, only he was not ?picked up in a railway carriage.? In the modern age, Mrs. Brown would not survive. Rather pessimistically, Feiron observes that the young people in the modern days want neither the tragic and heroic, nor the flighty and fantastic. They seem to be more comfortable with the ?photographic? and abstract. Thus, young people like Proust, because he does not impose on them a Mrs. Brown, but he simply provides a real, ?photographic? character of himself while cunningly showing them philosophies of life. Feiron concludes with the statement that Woolf is simply wrong in her analysis on character development and hopes that she will one day disprove it herself.

5. Herbert Muller first states the major aims of Woolf as a novelist and then proceeds to analyze and criticize her fictional works.

Muller, Herbert. "Virginia Woolf, and Feminine Fiction." Modern Fiction: A Study of Values (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1937), pp. 317-28. annotated bibliography: Muller writes that Woolf, as a novelist, makes it her job to catch the ?elusive Mrs. Brown,? to reproduce in purer form the actual sensation of living, to render immediately the essence of experience by subtle intimation and not by analysis or comment, to create the ?atmosphere? of life, and to abandon the Edwardian formal narrative and portraying innumerable snapshots. ?In short, she is one of the most thoroughgoing impressionists,? observes Muller. While Muller at first praises Woolf for a job well done in those respects, he subsequently identifies the inherent shortcomings of adhering only to those aims in writing a novel.

These shortcomings can be grouped into two major themes: that Woolf is too fastidious in life?s details that she misses larger, ultimate views; and secondly, her characters are too delicate, too weak to experience real, uninhibited passion. Muller feels that Woolf dwells too much on the inner life of her characters; she does not provide an explanation how these details of inner lives fit into a bigger picture. Though her style of presentation is "lovely," Muller says, "dipping, sparkling, rippling," the glimmer and constant flutter of her writing eventually palls into something monotonous, because she seems to write nothing but the details and snapshots of her character?s inner lives. Yes, she brilliantly portrays the human spirit to the maximum, but she does not give the spirit a place to reside nor real purposes to fulfill. One must ask, where is the flesh, blood, dress, home, and world of her characters? Muller suggests that her novels are sometimes ?mere fussiness? and that Woolf is too immersed in the inner life ?which is not the ?whole of life.? According to Muller, Woolf did not succeed in capturing the whole of life because she was too obsessed with catching Mrs. Brown.

Muller?s second complaint of Woolf as a novelist is that she does not give her characters enough passion, enough gripping emotions. Yes, they have all the subtlety and nuances of everyday individuals, but they seem to be nothing but genteel and well-mannered ladies and gentlemen whom one could meet in drawing-rooms and dinner tables. Her method of character development is more like weaving a fine gossamer web (indeed, as Muller states, her characters are wispy, evanescent, perishable); one would never venture to place any kind of profound or tumultuous experience on them. In a sense, agrees with Arnold Bennett?s critique of Woolf?s novels as ?lacking vitality.? Finally, Muller partly attributes Woolf?s writing style to the fact that she is a woman, for woman is better at describing and discerning the intimate problems of human relationships, but not large issues or ultimate meanings. ?It is difficult to imagine a woman writing a novel like Lord Jim, The Brothers Karamazov, or Arrowsmith,? states Muller. As evidenced in Mrs. Dalloway, her characters are, on the whole, gentle and tender, perhaps even sheltered, with the exception of Septimus Smith, a shell-shocked veteran who committed suicide. But even then, as Muller notices, the harsh and raw emotions of the situation are not presented; in fact, the situation is made tidy ? it is merely touching, at worst disturbing, and indeed almost ?pretty.?

6. E.M. Forster, one of members of the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group, writes that Virginia Woolf cannot create memorable characters.

E. M. Forster. Virginia Woolf. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1942). annotated bibliography: As Woolf uses E.M. Forster?s works as an example against Bennet?s work in ?Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,? Forster writes the following of her ability in character-creation:

?She could seldom so portray a character that it was remembered afterwards on its own account, as Emma is remembered, for instance, or Dorothea Casaubon, or Sophia and Constance in The Old Wives? Tale.?

7. Irving Kreutz believes that Woolf misrepresented Bennett's works in order to win over the public.

Kreutz, Irving. "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Woolf." Modern Fiction Studies VIII (summer 1962): 103-115. annotated bibliography: Irving?s essay is much like Samuel Hynes?s in that both authors believe Woolf did not play fair in her criticism of Bennett ?she misread Bennett?s novel (Hilda Lessways) for her own purposes. Though Irving believes that Woolf made a ?steely rebellion? against the powerful Edwardians, he begins his essay by pointing out the weaknesses in Woolf?s ?Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.? First, Woolf seems to spray her pages with Bennett?s truisms: ?The foundation of good fiction is character-creating and nothing else? (a phrase quoted time and again by numerous critics); or ?If the characters are real the novel will have a chance.? However, this use of so many of Bennett?s words, writes Irving, makes Woolf?s argument weak, for she seems to agree with too many of Bennett?s sayings.

Along the lines of misreading Bennett?s work, Irving cites several examples in ?Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown? to point out how exactly Woolf used Hilda Lessways to her own advantage. Woolf accuses Bennett of failing to present a ?real, true, and convincing? character. However, Irving points out that there are eight pages which precede what Woolf cited as evidence against Bennett, eight pages that were ?devoted entirely to an investigation, analysis? of the heroine. Woolf only cited three items at the end of those eight pages, trivialities such as ?She shut the door in a soft, controlled way? or ?She was fond of reading Maud; she was endowed with the power to feel intensely.? No wonder, writes Irving, if readers of ?Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown? feel that the Edwardians left their characters in a corner and never looked them.

Irving makes another salient point that Woolf and Bennett are more alike than they care to admit. Bennett, as Irving cites his journal, was really trying to break free of Victorian standards of novel-writing, just as Woolf believes herself to be breaking free of Edwardian restrictions. Both were rebelling against a previous era. ?Would not Mrs. Woolf have been less stringent, one wonders, if she had realized that he too was rebelling against the tradition ?the Victorian one ? that was expected to serve as a model for his generation?? writes Irving. To further support his claim, Irving makes a thorough comparison of Mrs. Dalloway and Hilda Lessways, arguing that both characters are introduced in much the same way. He writes, ?Rather dazzling technical innovations of one sort or another in the opening pages of Mrs. Dalloway should not blind us to a realization that these pages are not unlike in intent and accomplishment than those at the beginning of Hilda Lessways.? Ultimately, Irving feels that it is quite unfair to judge Bennett according to the standards and the rather biased view point of Woolf, especially when she was not quite willing to allow her readers to see Bennett writing as actually he did. ?It must be said?that she has played fast and loose with a perfectly serious attempt on the part of a perfectly serious writer to do what he thought he must do,? writes Irving. But if Woolf?s criticism is a misreading of Bennett?s work, Irving concludes, Bennett?s is a ?non-reading? of hers.

8. Samuel Hynes stalwartly defends Bennett against Woolf. His essay implies that Woolf and Bennett fought for more personal reasons, like class-bias, in which case, Woolf was the "high-brow," aristocratic woman, while Bennett was the "low-brow," self-made man.

Hynes, Samuel. "The Whole Contention Between Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Woolf." Edwardian Occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 24-38. annotated bibliography: Hynes begins his essay with a brief synopsis of Bennett?s important works and his contributions to literary criticism (writing the ?Books and Persons? column of New Age). The synopsis is meant to show how prolific Bennett (as opposed to Woolf) was at the time the Bennett-Woolf debate began. In a sense, Bennett had the literary experience, background, and established professional base (due to his older age) to comment upon the works of Woolf, then a still relatively new author. In reality, Hynes writes that Bennett should not solely be looked upon as an ?Edwardian? as Woolf makes him; rather, he should be classified as a ?Conscious Artist,? much like the literary figures (James, Conrad, etc.) whom Woolf derives her art. Hynes then proceeds to narrate the time span of their debate, beginning with an unsigned and slightly offensive review of Bennett?s Books and Persons that Woolf wrote for the TLS in July 1917 (implying that Woolf was responsible for starting the debate). In this first review, Hynes says, she creates a group of Edwardians (Galsworthy, Wells, and Bennett) which she would later use to attack.

The essay progresses as the Bennett-Woolf debate continues throughout a decade. Hynes cites several of Woolf?s works and Bennett?s critique of them, as well as a few of Bennett?s works and Woolf?s comments in turn. Whatever the case, Hynes always sides with Bennett and makes Woolf somewhat of a fastidious, sheltered, and over-confident individual. A new author (and especially a female feminist author like Woolf), Bennett suggests, she is much too sensitive to criticism of any kind. ?For one paragraph of mixed praise and criticism of Jacob?s Room, Bennett had reaped six separate published attacks and one lecture,? writes Hynes, when describing the retaliations of Woolf. Even when she does retaliate with critical essays in The Nation and Athenaeum (with her husband as its literary editor), Hynes observes, her essays are full of faults of clumsiness, ?ill-temper,? and failure of the imagination. H

ynes?s conclusion to the Bennett-Woolf debate was mainly that they really shouldn?t have been one, since both writers, in actuality, were arguing for the same things, just in absolute terms. He attributes the argument not as a genuine concern (on either side) for the future of literature but for more personal reasons, as he says, ?Bennett and Woolf were antithetical in all the important particulars of their personalities. It is equally obvious, I think, that they were not antithetical in their views of their common art.? He implies that this ?personal reason? for their debate is class-bias, especially on the part of Woolf, an aristocratic, ?high-brow,? well-bred, drawing-room woman, publicly disparaging the ?low-brow? Bennett. But however Woolf might appear entirely confident of her views in the public eye, she does, in her diary, admit to her lack of that ?reality? gift which Bennett and followers so esteem. And finally, Hynes holds Woolf responsible for the decline of Bennett?s reputation, intimating that Woolf denied Bennett the proper and well-deserved place he should have had among the greatest novelists, the ?conscious artists.?

9. Christine Lewis sides with the ?Bennett realists? on what he calls the ?boy and girl quarrel? between Woolf and Bennett.

Lewis, Wyndham. "Virginia Woolf: 'Mind' and 'Matter' on the Plane of a literary Controversy." Retrieved on May 26, 2005, from http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/English annotated bibliography: Lewis calls Woolf an orthodox ?idealist? too obsessed with her version of ?spiritualism? in character development. No matter how Woolf might convince herself that the ?spiritual? values are separate from the commonplace materialism of Bennett, Wells, and Galsworthy, Lewis feels that her ?spiritualism? exists only as a complement of hard-and-fast matter. ??[In] any work at all of prose-fiction, however disembodied in theory, there is, as an important, and indeed essential component, a great deal of the technique of ?realism,? ? Lewis says. He defends Bennett by pointing out that the Woolf is making too simple a case of the difference between ?Mind? and ?Matter.? Woolf sees the difference as black and white when in reality, a gray middle-ground area exists. Woolf has once wrote that it is because the materialists were concerned not with the spirit but with the body that they have disappointed us. ?But is it so simple?? asks Lewis, as he proceeds to explain that Bennett was really delicately mental as he was grossly material, and that with the masculine and feminine ways of both authors, ?they were much of a muchness--indeed, a good match.? Indeed, Lewis points out, the preoccupations of Mrs. Dalloway are after all not so far removed from the interests of Mr. Bennett?s characters.

Lewis goes on to criticize Woolf on other aspects of her contention with Bennett, one of which deals with her ?excuse? why, according to Bennett, there were no real master novelists at the time.

"Now the point of the story [?Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown?], we are told, that Mrs. Woolf, being born a novelist of course, and this episode occurring apparently before she had written any novels (1910 is the date implied) is in a quandary as to what to do. She would have liked to write a novel about Mrs. Brown, she tells us. But how was she to do it? For after all Wells, Galsworthy and Bennett (the only novelists apparently that, true child of her time, she knew about) had not taught her how to do it: the only tools (she apologizes for this professional word) available were those out of the tool-box of this trio. And alas! they were not suitable for the portrayal of Mrs. Brown. So what was poor little she to do?"

Here, Lewis almost mocks Woolf in her dilemma on writing novels. He looks upon Woolf?s explanation on the elusiveness of Mrs. Brown as a mere excuse, or worse yet, an acknowledgement, that she could not write novels, the novels that the realists have so prized. Near the end of the essay, Lewis points out that Woolf is even a bit narrow-minded in the sense that she focuses too much on the ?soul? or the inner beings. She seems to be almost afraid of the outside world in which her characters participate. Lewis feels that she can only concoct ?pale little fragments? of art, while the external reality of life passed by her.