“There have been several stages in our growth since the special type of fiction was evolved. There was the sentimentality of Richardson; then came my favorite, Fielding, our first realist; and finally arrived the critical period with its early representative in Jane Austen and more recent upholder in Meredith. We had to pass through stages far from real life before we reached the time of direct dealing with life, of real criticism of life. Take such men as Wells and Galsworthy--and maybe Arnold Bennett;--are they not trying to see life through and through? I do not believe in the realism that merely depicts for the picture. Realism of the kind I mean not only depicts, but interprets as well.” “How about Fielding, your favorite?” asked Mr. Moses. “Oh, he had his faults, but they were honest ones.” Mr. Moses remarked Miss Glasgow’s enthusiasm as she talked. “He was the first to teach us that life--and ordinary life, too--has poetry in it. There are some of our writers with a social conscience who use narrative as a mere vehicle for philosophy. It is always well to have a big central idea to hold the building together, but realism--though some novelists would separate it--cannot be practiced apart from vision. The novelist must have a perspective in life. “When I first began writing I steeped myself in economics, in sociology--and later in German mysticism. But one learns only that he may unlearn, if necessary. In doing _Virginia_ I was obliged to revisit certain localities to refresh my memory of things. But I could not write of them immediately; the impressions had to filter through my imagination. “A man who writes for his age seldom writes for any other. And that is why I do not believe in being consciously local. Mr. Howells, as our greatest realist, made us see the poetry of the life he knew best. While I’ve never consciously been influenced by any school, I have felt what he has done for the novel. At one time I knew my Balzac, my Flaubert, my Guy de Maupassant, by heart. And of course I read the Russians, who, I think, are the greatest of all novelists. But as far as I am aware, I have worked my own method out for myself.” Because she believes so much in the novel form, Miss Glasgow has never written a play nor ever consented to the dramatization of any of her books. “I like the flow of the novel,” she says. “It is the best expression of the people and the times. The drama cannot comprehend all of life as it is to-day. A larger canvas is needed to picture the greater complexity. The greatest drama was written in times when life was far more simple than it is now. The novel alone can take in its flow all of this complexity.”