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THE ...
RUNAWAYS
All rights reserved
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED.
DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E. AND GREAT WINDMILL STREET, W.
NAT GOULD: AN APPRECIATION.
NAT GOULD'S novelsof the Turf are readand enjoyed by multitudesof men andwomen all over theworld. That in itselfis a guarantee of literarymerit. Had hebeen a stylist, the saleof his hundred oddbooks would neverhave run into a scoreof millions. He wroteto please and not to puzzle, to give pleasure and notto educate, and his reward came in the gratitude of ahost of admirers of clean, healthy fiction.
His main theme was the King of Sports and theSport of Kings. Nat Gould dearly loved a horse,and so does the great British public, including thosewho have no liking for racing. It is a characteristicas national as our admiration of ships, sailors and thesea. The theme fascinated him, and, combined witha gift for writing, was one of the secrets of his success.Another reason for his almost boundless popularity isto be found in the "atmosphere" of his stories, whichis created without elaborate literary setting. Themachinery of it is hidden by reason of its very artlessness.The romance is told in a plain, straightforwardway that carries intense conviction, and though theplots are neither subtle nor involved, they are unfoldedin so vigorous and lifelike a manner that fewpeople who pick up one of Nat Gould's novels areable to put it down before having finished the lastchapter. Few modern writers can boast that theyare read and understood at a single sitting.
His novels ring true. They are clean, manly andsincere. There is nothing vicious about them. AsThe Times truly said of Nat Gould in its obituarynotice of him, "He must have written some millionsof words, but few of them were wasted, if a rattlinggood story makes a reader happier and more contentedfor having read it."