The Good Red Earth

A review from The Book Buyer: A Monthly Review of American and Foreign Literature: In The Good Red Earth, Mr. Eden Phillpotts has forsaken his later and grander manner-that of "Children of the Mist" and "Lying Prophets "-for his earlier and lighter method. He still is true to his beloved Devon, but the country itself steps further into the background to give freer play to plot. "All dramatic rights reserved," says the title-page of this book; one wonders if...
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A review from The Book Buyer: A Monthly Review of American and Foreign Literature:

In The Good Red Earth, Mr. Eden Phillpotts has forsaken his later and grander manner-that of "Children of the Mist" and "Lying Prophets "-for his earlier and lighter method. He still is true to his beloved Devon, but the country itself steps further into the background to give freer play to plot. "All dramatic rights reserved," says the title-page of this book; one wonders if there is enough action in it for the stage. Gammer Hatherley, who, at fourscore, dreads to die in a storm because in such a tempest the angels cannot fly, is a genre picture of a fast disappearing type of the British peasantry; there is an attractive love-story, in which the high-born maid and her lowly swain are placed in an entirely new situation, but the interest of the book centres in the lay preacher and peddler Alpheus Newt, whose sanctimonious cant is intermingled with a kind of impudent humor, to which his simple hearers are deaf, but which greatly amuses the reader. He is a very entertaining scamp, this Mr. Newt, and a very human one, not a theatrical angel of darkness, but a self-seeking hypocrite who, having attained his own aim, is sincerely willing, and able, too, to help others. He comes out strong in the end, and well deserves the thanks of the lord of the manor, for in all his life of deceit and cant he has never been so much himself as he is in that one moment when, utterly disinterested, he straightens out tangled paths and departs with an old man's blessing, and his check for five thousand pounds.

Mr. Newt is worth knowing, so are the lovers, and the fine woman who is the daughter of this " good red earth," in her apple orchard, and at the cider press-a picture of rural life that is a permanent addition to Mr. Phillpotts' gallery of rustic portraits. From first page to last, moreover, there is the pleasurable feeling that one is in the hands of a finished literary artist, who, knowing what he is to tell, knows how it must be told.