 Walpole sought critical as well as financial success , and <unk> to write works that equalled those of Trollope , Thomas Hardy and Henry James . In his early days , he received frequent and generally <unk> scrutiny from major literary figures . He was a good friend of Virginia Woolf , and rated her as an influence ; she praised his gift for seizing on telling detail : " it is no <unk> to a writer to say that his gift is for the small things rather than for the large ... If you are faithful with the details the large effects will grow inevitably out of those very details " . Joseph Conrad said of him , " We see Mr. Walpole grappling with the truth of things spiritual and material with his characteristic earnestness , and we can <unk> the characteristics of this acute and sympathetic explorer of human nature . " 
