Reputations shift with the generations. Once a best-selling novelist, and remarkably prolific in what was a relatively short life, Walpole has since his death been largely neglected. Between 1909 and his death, Walpole wrote thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, plays, and three volumes of memoirs. Today, when he is remembered, it is for Rogue Herries, a novel set in the English Lake District, and involving gypsies and high adventure. Hugh Walpole was highly praised by contemporaries, including Henry James and J B Priestley. In his turn, he was supportive of other authors, especially young men just starting out. This short study of Joseph Conrad is acute in its conclusions and well worth rescuing from the obscurity into which it had fallen.