"What is remarkable is the portrait not only of Sponge, but of the whole society in which he moves. It is an extraordinarily tough society, without any of that self-consciousness which belongs to Hemingway's heroes. The men are tough as a matter of course... Probably Surtees owes this success to that observant eye and candour of speech which is his chief force as a writer. He has no cant of any kind; he is sucking up to nobody and no class. He has his moral standards, but he is not trying to preach them; there is none of that sense that we have, even in Trollope, of the moralizer... He writes of what he sees and knows, with a reckless sincerity especially refreshing in these self-conscious times."
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Joyce Cary in The Sunday Times (1957), reprinted as ‘Introduction’, R. S. Surtees, Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour [1853] (1982), pp. ix–xi
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Smith_Surtees
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Robert Smith Surtees
Robert Smith Surtees (May 17 1805 – March 16 1864) was an English journalist, comic novelist and writer on field sports. His best-known creation, the Cockney huntsman Jorrocks, inspired Dickens's Pickwick Papers.
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