* * The award of the Hawthornden Prize to Mr.
Chark,-; Morgan for his novel, The Fountain,. is one of the few adjudications of this nature which will, I imagine; be generally acceptable. Mr. Morgan's progress to the front rank of contemporary novelists has been amazingly rapid. Although he, has in fact written four novels, his reputation is mainly founded on two. His first book, The Gunroom, which was published in the year after the War, was virtually suppressed by the Admiralty and is now the quarry of collectors. His second, My Name -is Legion, which appeared in 1925, attracted the notice of the discerning but failed to achieve a popular success. He first attracted general attention in 1929 with that brilliant novel, Portrait in a Mirror. Last year came The Fountain, which, but for the protestations of a few disgruntled dramatic critics, received everywhere the praise it deserved. Its sales, large in this country, were phenomenal in America, where for more than a couple of months it sold at the rate of a thousand copies a day. Hollywood, influenced, I am afraid, rather- by the alarums and excursions of a popular success than by its own critical discernment, has succumbed, to it and will shortly issue its own—very definitely its• own— version of the book. Mr. Morgan is at present at work on a new novel, and is, of course, the official biographer of the late George Moore.
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