Those who are familiar with Mr. Marshall's work and life will easily discover therein echoes of his own experience. He is an Englishman by birth and descent, familiar with both town and country. He was born on the sixth of September, 1866, and received in his home life and preliminary training plenty of material which appeared later in the novels. His father came from the city, like the father in _Abington Abbey_; he himself was graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, like the son of _Peter Binney_; it was intended but not destined that he should follow his father's business career, and he worked in a city office like the son of Armitage Brown; he went to Australia like the hero's sister in _Many Junes_; he made three visits to America, but fortunately has not yet written an American novel; he studied theology with the intention of becoming a clergyman in the Church of England, like so many young men in his stories; in despair at finding a publisher for his work, he became a publisher himself, and issued his second novel, _The House of Merrilees_, which had as much success as it deserved; he tried journalism before and during the war; he lived in two small Sussex towns with literary associations, Winchelsea and Rye, in the latter from 1908 to 1913; then until 1917 his home was in Switzerland; he has now gone back to the scene of his university days, Cambridge. In 1902 he was married and lived for some time in Beaulieu (pronounced Bewly) in the New Forest, faithfully portrayed in _Exton Manor_. He spent three happy years there planning and making a garden, like the young man in _The Old Order Changeth_. Although his novels are filled with hunting and shooting, he is not much of a sportsman himself, being content only to observe. He loves the atmosphere of sport rather than sport. His favourite recreations are walking, reading, painting, and piano-playing, and the outdoor flavour of his books may in part be accounted for by the fact that much of his writing is done in the open air. Like many another successful man of letters, his first step was a false start; for in 1899 he produced a novel called _Peter Binney, Undergraduate_, which has never been republished in America, and perhaps never will be. This is a topsy-turvy book, where an ignorant father insists on entering Cambridge with his son; and after many weary months of coaching, succeeds in getting his name on the books. The son is a steady-headed, unassuming boy, immensely popular with his mates; the father, determined to recapture his lost youth, disgraces his son and the college by riotous living, and is finally expelled. The only good things in the book are the excellent pictures of May Week and some snap-shots at college customs; but the object of the author is so evident and he has twisted reality so harshly in order to accomplish it, that we have merely a work of distortion.