From the book's back cover:

The Lyrical Novel

STUDIES IN HERMANN HESSE,
ANDRE GIDE, AND VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Ralph Freedman attempts to define in this important book a type of novel which often has elements of the picaresque, the Bildungsroman, the stream of consciousness novel, and the prose poem, yet is a 'distinct genre.' One wonders why nobody before Professor Freedman has tried systematically to define a type of fiction which obviously occupies a crucial position in the history of the novel, and lends itself to all kinds of intriguing speculations about the role of German Romanticism, French prose poetry, and the English novel of sensibility in determining its historical antecedents … THE LYRICAL NOVEL should be read by anyone interested in modern fiction. It is probably not premature to say it does for the lyrical novel what THE CRAFT OF FICTION did for the Jamesian novel and AXEL'S CASTLE did for the Symbolist novel." — Books Abroad.

"Ralph Freedman's THE LYRICAL NOVEL combines sound critical scholarship with a high degree of readability … The results of this investigation are absorbing and sensitive critical analyses of the works of these novelists, particularly those of Hermann Hesse and Virginia Woolf." — Modern Language Journal.

"… perceptive and informative … However, this book is not simply a theoretical one. By limiting itself to examination of three novelists — Hermann Hesse, Andre Gide, and Virginia Woolf —enlightenment of considerable particularity is brought to bear upon a difficult subject." — Virginia Quarterly Review.

RALPH FREEDMAN is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature in Princeton University.