This is the eleventh and latest, but not last, volume of the novel-cycle Pilgrimage, the first, Pointed Roofs, having appeared in 1915, when it fell like a rock from a height into the literary waters. Since then each succeeding volume has made less of a splash, and the latest is likely to part the surface with scarcely a ripple. Reading the extravagant praises that were heaped on the early volumes by distinguished littérateurs it is hard now to understand how they could have aroused so much excitement and enthusiasm. But her contemporary reputation was not a bogus one, like Stephen Phillips's, nor did it spring from a genuine perennial bad taste, like Rupert Brooke's. Her volumes were certainly important at the time of their first appearance, though it looks now as though (if these metaphorical liberties may be allowed) they were less a torrent in themselves than straws showing the course of a current. Pilgrimage has evidently less intrinsic than historical value; the third generation from Dr Oliver Elton will have its author docketed for literary-history purposes as a ‘precursor’. Miss Richardson was plainly an early if not very inspired employer of the ‘ stream of consciousness’ method, and she was undoubtedly an influence of sorts on at least one far greater novelist.