the name of Stacy Aumonier. As for the stories selected for this
volume, that is to some degree a matter of personal judgement; it is
quite possible that other editors would, in some instances, have made a
different choice.

JOHN COURNOS.

An additional word may be added on the principles which have governed
our choice. We have set ourselves the task of disengaging the essential
human qualities in our contemporary fiction which, when chronicled
conscientiously by our literary artists, may fairly be called a
criticism of life. We are not at all interested in formulae, and
organised criticism at its best would be nothing more than dead
criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead. What
has interested us, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh
living current which flows through the best British and Irish work, and
the psychological and imaginative reality which writers have conferred
upon it.

No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic
substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is
beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids
fair to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic
discrimination than we display at present.

The present record covers the period from July, 1921, to June, 1922,
inclusive. During this period we have sought to select from the stories
published in British and American periodicals those stories by British
and Irish authors which have rendered life imaginatively in organic
substance and artistic form. Substance is something achieved by the