“She struggled in thought to discover why it was she felt that these people did not read books and that she herself did. She felt that she would look at the end, and read here and there a little and know; know something, something they did not know. People thought it was silly, almost wrong to look at the end of a book. But if it spoilt a book, there was something wrong about the book. If it was finished and the interest gone when you know who married who, what was the good of reading at all? It was a sort of trick, a sell. Like a puzzle that was no more fun when you had found it out. There was something more in books than that . . . even Rosa Nouchette Carey and Mrs Hungerford, something that came to you out of a book, any bit of it, a page, a sentence–and the ‘stronger’ the author was, the more came. That was why Ouida put those others in the shade, not, not, not because her books were improper. It was her, herself somehow. Then you read books to find the author! That was it. That was the difference . . . that was how one was different from most people . . .”

Dorothy Richardson, Pilgrimage