Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard

I have been asked to introduce Miss Farjeon to the American public, and although I believe that introductions of this kind often do more harm than good, I have consented in this case because the instance is rare enough to justify an exception. If Miss Farjeon had been a promising young novelist either of the realistic or the romantic school, I should not have dared to express an opinion on her work, even if I had believed that she had greater gifts than the ninety-nine other promising young novelists who appear in the course of each decade. But she has a far rarer gift than any of those that go to the making of a successful novelist. She is one of the few who can conceive and tell a fairy-tale; the only one to my knowledge— with the just possible exceptions of James Stephens and Walter de la Mare— in my own generation. She has, in fact, the true gift of fancy. It has already been displayed in her verse— a form in which it is far commoner than in prose— but Martin Pippin is her first book in this kind