From TNR’s online archives, a light Max Beerbohm piece from 1920, in which he finds himself in a let cottage with nothing to read but the cottage’s own “scarlet or cerulean ’series’ of ’standard’ authors”:

Which of them? I gradually decided on a novel by a well-known writer whose works, though I had several times had the honor of meeting her, were known to me only by repute.

I knew nothing of them that was not good. The lady’s “output” had not been at all huge, and it was agreed that her “level” was high. I had always gathered that the chief characteristic of her work was its great “vitality.” The book in my hand was a third edition of her latest novel, and at the end of it were numerous press-notices, at which I glanced for confirmation. “Immense vitality,” yes, said one critic. “Full,” said another, “of an intense vitality.” “A book that will live,” said a third. How on earth did he know that? I was. however, very willing to believe in the vitality of this writer or all present purposes, vitality was a thing in which she herself, her talk, her glance, her gestures, abounded.