The Prelude to Adventure

Praised in a letter to the author by Carl Jung as "a psychological masterpiece," Walpole's early novel is the story of a Cambridge undergraduate, Olva Dune, who commits a murder. Ironically, at the moment he commits his crime, he feels the presence of God. March Square is not very far from Hyde Park Corner in London Town. Behind the whir and rattle of the traffic it stands, spacious and cool and very old, muffled by the little streets that guard it, happily unconscious, you would suppose, that there were any in all the world so unfortunate as to have less than five thousand a year for their support. Perhaps a hundred years ago March Square might boast of such superior ignorance, but fashions change, to prevent, it may be, our own too easily irritated..... monotonies.....