" INFLUENCED " BOOKS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—May I be allowed to thank Dame Edith Lyttelton for finding a name for a class of book, the origin and purpose of which have hitherto escaped me ? She defines this class as consisting of books " containing long connected narratives . . . produced automatically without conscious effort or thought." It seems to me that quite a number of the books I get from my library, and try to read, come within this category.
If they are the result of " messages from discarnate beings the mystery of their composition is solved, though not why publishers (mostly considered to be a pretty " hard-boiled " tribe) think it worth while putting them on the market. It is all clear to me now, for in my youth I frequented seances where messages of this kind were delivered. They betrayed no signs of " conscious effort or thought," but in those less sophisticated days their automatic authors never thought
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