The Oppidan

Excerpt from The Oppidan
This novel dealing with the Eton of twenty years ago carries no claim for greater accuracy than is found in a work of Sir Walter Scott. Historical names and characters may be retained in what is fiction, while the use of pseudonyms elsewhere does not mean that historical truth is wholly disguised. Real and false names may be mingled, a period telescoped, and even anachronisms strewn among the pages within the scope of one novel. For the novel should be the means of preserving much that cannot be conveyed in strictly historical works.
In modern time all specialised spheres of life become subject to the novelist, though his name be Bungle and his hall-mark Botch. Within the cosmos are a thousand worlds. Within the little world of England there are worlds within worlds, minute in time, unique in space. But to those who inhabit them they are the world, and to those who pass from them they remain sacred. The Eton world is such. Where life becomes stereotyped or traditional, the material of a novel may be found. The more restricted, the more difficult and interesting a novel should become. There is no English novel so technically correct as Zola's Debacle, and no British sport has inspired the accuracy with which Ibanez describes Spanish bullfighting.
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