Undoubtedly no novel during the past season has elicited more favorable criticism and more numerous letters from constant readers than “The House of Mirth.” The book had a certain artificial success from the start, because the impression went abroad that here at last was a book about Society, meaning the smallest number of the narrowest brains in any community from Kankakee to New York. On this very account there are a few millions of people in the United States who would not care to read it; but in view of the fact that some of the most serious critics have hailed “The House of Mirth” as a great American novel—only the bookseller now speaks of _the_ American novel—a good many of the few millions, being persons of means and intelligence, would be tempted to indulge themselves in the rare luxury of such a boon. We cannot profess to treat the book as a true picture of American Society; because while we know how to wear the clothes and order the things to eat and drink, when we have the money, we have never, in our best-dressed and best-fed moments, been able to convince ourselves that we are anything but hopelessly middle class. Yet we are happy—sometimes; and we are bound to marvel at some of the things the society people in “The House of Mirth” do. For the most part they act like those people in New York who are loosely described as Fifth-avenue bohemians, which means they are people of much money, thoroughly informed about the decorative issues of life, with nothing to do but bore themselves and with a taste and intelligence that, in literature or the theatre, never craves anything more exciting than a musical show or a third-class novel, written by a man in Chicago, about lords and ladies of some corner lost and forgotten in Continental Europe. Our marvel that these society people should seem so underbred is only an exhibition of our unfamiliarity with a certain social stratum. We would have no right to make record of it, if it were not for the fact that so many people, of the better class themselves, have written letters of protest to divers publications, protesting against the impression that “The House of Mirth” is a story accurately representing New York society. We quote one letter from the _New York Times Saturday Review_: “I am not a literary man, much less a literary critic, but I look forward each week to the appearance of _The New York Times Book Review_ with renewed interest and read the various criticisms of your readers as to the merits of “The House of Mirth,” which in almost every instance meets their approval as a literary production of unusual merit. The writer, however, an octogenarian, born and bred in New York City, member of one of its oldest families and presumably familiar with its society, can but look upon “The House of Mirth” as a gross libel upon that society, and as an insult to a class as pure, as refined, and as intellectual as may be found the world over....