Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE (13 March 1884 – 1 June 1941) was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. A best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, his works have been neglected since his death
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This book has been written in the form of a novel. I shall be perfectly content if many of my readers consider it only as a novel. And yet I would strongly maintain that it is more than a novel based on the life of John Cornelius. Cornelius enjoyed greatly to speak of himself and his life. He was the greatest egoist I have ever known and the least exasperating. For hours one could listen to him as he described his youth, his first strange days in London, his meetings with Carstang, Charlie Christian, Anne Swinnerton and many more, his marriage, his War experiences and the rest. He would give you conversations, word by word, dramatically impersonating the actors, would describe scenes in all their natural details. Many of these I copied afterwards into my notebooks.
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