Henry Seton Merriman published his first novel, Young Mistley, in 1888, when he was twenty-six years old. Messrs. Bentley's reader, in his critique on the book, spoke of its powerful situations and unconventionality of treatment: and, while dwelling at much greater length on its failings, declared, in effect, its faults to be the right faults, and added that, if Young Mistley was not in itself a good novel, its author was one who might hereafter certainly write good novels.