Royle reading

This paper addresses Nicholas Royle's meditation on reading in his 2022 essay on reading Elizabeth Bowen's first novel, The Hotel (1927), for what he tells us is the fourth and possibly the last time. The paper returns to the question of telepathy, which has been on Royle's mind at least since his first book, Telepathy and Literature (1991). In particular, it picks up on his reading of the novel's protagonist, Sydney Warren, who is as if triangulated through the projection of the thoughts of the people around her. Bowen reads Sydney as if she is ‘a young girl in a story told by a man'; Royle reads Bowen reading Sydney as if she is ‘out of a book’; I read Royle as if he is in one.