[7] Caine was best known in his lifetime for his magazine and newspaper articles and short stories, published regularly in Pearsons, The Field, Punch, The Evening Standard and The Morning Post.
The Times Literary Supplement described the title character of Caine’s first novel as “a kind of legal ‘Verdant Green.’ He comes up, a simple-minded prig, from Cambridge, and falls into the hands of friends in ‘the honourable Society of the Outer Temple,’ who show a real creative genius in playing off practical jokes upon him.
They, and the reader, have much entertainment; but Pilkington ‘gets home’ in the end.”[8] Caine’s second novel, The Confectioners (1906, with John Fairbairn), was described by the Times Literary Supplement as “a rollicking and original tale of the great factory of Simon Muddock, where all the wants of man were met by chemical preparations; of its overthrow by the discovery of ‘Gruntleite,’ the universal producer, with a surprising sequel.”[9] Caine’s next two novels, The Pursuit of the President (1907) and The Victim & The Votery (1908), both take the suffragette cause as material for satire and comedy.
The former “is a rollicking account of the efforts of Miss Waugh, a Suffragette leader, to interview a member of the Cabinet”;[10] “it is laughter-provoking from the first page to the last, with here and there a dash of caustic, penetrating criticism, which shows that the author is capable of a good deal more than mere buffoonery.”[11] The latter, in which democratic hopes have given way to disillusionment and extremism, “tells of the efforts of a particularly virulent suffragette to kidnap the Prime Minister in a way that moves to laughter on every page.”[12][13] His fifth book, Boom!
The Strangeness of Noel Carton (1921) is a psychological thriller told in journal form, with a striking book jacket by Salomon van Abbé.