Percy Lubbock

An English essayist, critic, and biographer, Percy Lubbock is most often remembered for The Craft of Fiction (1921), a book that became an important touchstone in discussions of how novels are made. Its ideas about point of view and narrative form were widely debated, but they gave him a lasting place in literary criticism.

He moved in literary circles connected with major writers and artists of his time, and he also wrote studies of figures including Henry James and Earlham writers from the Victorian world. His work often focused less on plot than on how a story is shaped on the page, which made him especially interesting to serious readers of fiction.

Today, he is usually read not as a novelist himself but as a thoughtful guide to the techniques behind great novels. For listeners and readers coming to older literary criticism, his writing offers a clear window into early 20th-century ideas about form, perspective, and the novelist’s craft.