The Pall Mall Budget.—‘For this week the only novel worth mentioning is Mrs. Steel’s The Potter’s Thumb. Her admirable From the Five Rivers, since it dealt with native Indian life, was naturally compared with Mr. Kipling’s stories. In The Potter’s Thumb the charm which came from the freshness of them still remains. Almost every character is convincing, and some of them excellent to a degree.’
The Globe.—‘This is a brilliant story—a story that fascinates, tingling with life, steeped in sympathy with all that is best and saddest.’
The Manchester Guardian.—‘The impression left upon one after reading The Potter’s Thumb is that a new literary artist, of very great and unusual gifts, has arisen.... In short, Mrs. Steel must be congratulated upon having achieved a very genuine and amply deserved success.’
The Glasgow Herald.—‘A clever story which, in many respects, brings India very near to its readers. The novel is certainly one interesting alike to the Anglo-Indian and to those untravelled travellers who make their only voyages in novelists’ romantic company.’
The Scotsman.—‘It is a capital story, full of variety and movement, which brings with great vividness before the reader one of the phases of Anglo-Indian life. Mrs. Steel writes forcibly and sympathetically, and much of the charm of the picture which she draws lies in the force with which she brings out the contrast between the Asiatic and European world. The Potter’s Thumb is very good reading, with its mingling of the tragedy and comedy of life. Its evil woman par excellence ... is a finished study.’
The Westminster Gazette.—‘A very powerful and tragic story. Mrs. Steel gives us again, but with greater elaboration than before, one of those strong, vivid, and subtle pictures of Indian life which we have learnt to expect from her. To a reader who has not been in India her books seem to get deeper below the native crust, and to have more of the instinct for the Oriental than almost anything that has been written in this time.’
The Leeds Mercury.—‘The Potter’s Thumb is a powerful story of the mystical kind, and one which makes an instant appeal to the imagination of the reader.... There is an intensity of vision in this story which is as remarkable as it is rare, and the book, in its vivid and fascinating revelations of life, and some of its limitations, is at once brilliant and, in the deepest and therefore least demonstrative sense, impassioned.’
The National Observer.—‘A romance of East and West, in which the glamour, intrigue, and superstition of India are cunningly interwoven and artfully contrasted with the bright and changeable aspects of modern European society. “Love stories,” as Mr. Andrew Lang once observed, “are best done by women”; and Mrs. Steel’s treatment of Rose Tweedie’s love affair with Lewis Gordon is a brilliant instance in point. So sane and delightful an episode is rare in fiction now-a-days.’
The Times.—‘Time was when these sketches of native Punjabi society would have been considered a curiosity in literature. They are sufficiently remarkable, even in these days, when interest in the “dumb millions” of India is thoroughly alive, and writers, great and small, vie in ministering to it. They are the more notable as being the work of a woman. Mrs. Steel has evidently been brought into close contact with the domestic life of all classes, Hindu and Mahomedan, in city and village, and has steeped herself in their customs and superstitions.... Mrs. Steel’s book is of exceptional merit and freshness.’
Vanity Fair.—‘Stories of the Punjaub—evidently the work of one who has an intimate knowledge of, and a kindly sympathy for, its people. It is to be hoped that this is not the last book of Indian stories that Mrs. Steel will give us.’
The Spectator.—‘Merit, graphic force, and excellent local colouring are conspicuous in Mrs. Steel’s From the Five Rivers, and the short stories of which the volume is composed are evidently the work of a lady who knows what she is writing about.’
The Glasgow Herald.—‘This is a collection of sketches of Hindu life, full for the most part of brilliant colouring and cleverly wrought in dialect. The writer evidently knows her subject, and she writes about it with unusual skill.’
The North British Daily Mail.—‘In at least two of the sketches in Mrs. Steel’s book we have a thoroughly descriptive delineation of life in Indian, or rather, Hindoo, villages. “Ganesh Chunel” is little short of a masterpiece, and the same might be said of “Shah Sujah’s Mouse.” In both we are made the spectator of the conditions of existence in rural India. The stories are told with an art that conceals the art of story-telling.’
The Athenæum.—‘They possess this great merit, that they reflect the habits, modes of life, and ideas of the middle and lower classes of the population of Northern India better than do systematic and more pretentious works.’
The Leeds Mercury.--‘By no means a book to neglect.... It is written with brains.... Mrs. Steel understands the life which she describes, and she has sufficient literary art to describe it uncommonly well. These short stories of Indian life are, in fact, quite above the average of stories long or short.... There is originality, insight, sympathy, and a certain dramatic instinct in the portrayal of character about the book.’
The Globe.—‘She puts before us the natives of our Empire in the East as they live and move and speak, with their pitiful superstitions, their strange fancies, their melancholy ignorance of what poses with us for knowledge and civilisation, their doubt of the new ways, the new laws, the new people. “Shah Sujah’s Mouse,” the gem of the collection—a touching tale of unreasoning fidelity towards an English "Sinny Baba"—is a tiny bit of perfect writing.’
The Standard.—‘The Last Sentence is a remarkable story; it abounds with dramatic situations, the interest never for a moment flags, and the characters are well drawn and consistent.’
The Saturday Review.—‘There is a great deal as well as a great variety of incident in the story, and more than twenty years are apportioned to it; but it never seems over-crowded, nor has it the appearance of several stories rolled into one. The Last Sentence is a remarkable novel, and the more so because its strong situations are produced without recourse to the grosser forms of immorality.’
The Daily Telegraph.—‘One of the most powerful and adroitly-worked-out plots embodied in any modern work of fiction runs through The Last Sentence.... This terrible tale of retribution is told with well-sustained force and picturesqueness, and abounds in light as well as shade.’
The Morning Post.—‘Maxwell Gray has the advantage of manner that is both cultured and picturesque, and while avoiding even the appearance of the melodramatic, makes coming events cast a shadow before them so as to excite and entertain expectation.... It required the imagination of an artist to select the kind of Nemesis which finally overtakes this successful evil-doer, and which affords an affecting climax to a rather fascinating tale.’
The Glasgow Herald.—‘This is a very strong story.... It contains much rich colouring, some striking situations, and plenty of thoroughly living characters. The interest is of a varied kind, and, though the hero is an aristocrat, the pictures of human life are by no means confined to the upper circles.’
The Leeds Mercury.—‘It shows a command of the resources of the novelist’s art which is by no means common, and it has other qualities which lift it far above the average level of the circulating library. It is written with a literary grace and a moral insight which are seldom at fault, and from first to last it is pervaded with deep human interest.’
The Queen.—‘Maxwell Gray has a certain charm and delicacy of style. She has mastered the subtleties of a particular type of weak character until she may be almost called its prophet.’
The Lady’s Pictorial.—‘The book is a clever and powerful one.... Cynthia Marlowe will live in our memories as a sweet and noble woman; one of whom it is a pleasure to think of beside some of the ‘emancipated’ heroines so common in the fiction of the day.’
The Manchester Courier.—‘The author of The Silence of Dean Maitland gives to the reading world another sound and magnificent work.... In both these works Maxwell Gray has taken “Nemesis” as his grand motif. In each work there sits behind the hero that atra cura which poisons the wholesome draught of human joy. In each is present the corroding blight that comes of evil done and not discovered.’
The Athenæum.—‘There is no one but Mr. Kipling who can make his readers taste and smell, as well as see and hear, the East; and in this book (if we except the description of Tarvin’s adventures in the deserted city of Gunvaur, which is perhaps less clear-cut than usual) he has surely surpassed himself. In his faculty for getting inside the Eastern mind and showing its queer workings Mr. Kipling stands alone.’
The Academy.—‘The Naulahka contains passages of great merit. There are descriptions scattered through its pages which no one but Mr. Kipling could have written.... Whoever reads this novel will find much of it hard to forget ... and the story of the exodus from the hospital will rank among the best passages in modern fiction.’
The Times.—‘A happy idea, well adapted to utilize the respective experience of the joint authors.... An excellent story.... The dramatic train of incident, the climax of which is certainly the interview between Sitabhai and Tarvin, the alternate crudeness and ferocity of the girl-queen, the susceptibility of the full-blooded American, hardly kept in subjection by his alertness and keen eye to business, the anxious eunuch waiting in the distance with the horses, and fretting as the stars grow paler and paler, the cough of the tiger slinking home at the dawn after a fruitless night’s hunt—the whole forms a scene not easily effaced from the memory.’
The Glasgow Herald.—‘An entrancing story beyond doubt.... The design is admirable—to bring into violent contrast and opposition the widely differing forces of the Old World and the New—and while, of course, it could have been done without the use of Americanese, yet that gives a wonderful freshness and realism to the story. The design is a bold one, and it has been boldly carried out.... The interest is not only sustained throughout, it is at times breathless.... The Maharajah, the rival queens, the pomp and peril of Rhatore, are clearly Mr. Kipling’s own, and some of the Indian chapters are in his best style.’
The Speaker.—‘In the presentation of Rhatore there is something of the old Kiplingesque glamour; it is to the pages of Mr. Kipling that one must go for the strange people and incidents of the royal household at Rhatore.... It is enough to say that the plotting of that most beautiful and most wicked gipsy, Sitabhai is interesting; that Sitabhai is well created; and that the chapter which describes her secret meeting with Tarvin is probably the finest and the most impressive in the book.’
The Bookman.—‘The real interest of the book is in the life behind the curtains of the Maharajah’s palace. The child Kunwar, his mother, the forsaken Zulu queen, the gipsy with her wicked arts, are pictures of Indian life, which even Mr. Kipling has not surpassed.’
The Speaker.—‘In his first book, Mr. Bailey-Martin, Mr. White gave us a remarkable picture of the sordidness of life in a suburban household. In the present volume he rises to a higher social level, and treats of rising members of Parliament, of political leaders, and even of Prime Ministers.... The sketches of types are both forcible and true.’
The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘None can travel over his brightly-written pages without being gladdened by the little flashes of epigram which light up the scene for us, or stirred by the shrewdness and worldly wisdom which he has put into the mouths of his characters. One of the charms of the book lies in the conviction that its author knows the world, and is full of a broad, full knowledge, and therefore sympathy with the foibles, passions, and sins with which it abounds.... It is a sermon preached on the old Æschylian text, that the evil doer must always suffer. The book is a drama of biting intensity, a tragedy of inflexible purpose and relentless result.’
The Daily News.—‘Will appeal to many tastes. There is intrigue enough in it for those who love a story of the ordinary kind, and the political part is perhaps rather more attractive in its sparkle and variety of incident than the real thing itself.’
The Daily Telegraph.—‘Corruption more than fulfils the brilliant promise of Mr. Bailey-Martin.... As its title indicates, it deals with the political and social cankers of the day, which it lays bare with a fearless and unerring touch.’
The Standard.—‘The scenes in the South of France are particularly well done; without any attempt at local colour Mr. White has caught the atmosphere skilfully, and there are one or two clever touches of which he appears unconscious. Taking the book as a whole, it is written with ease and knowledge, and has about it nothing of the amateur.’
The Graphic.—‘A very able piece of work.’
Black and White.—‘The risqué situation is wrought with brilliance and subtilty.... Mrs. Mannering recalls Becky Sharp; and Carew is a typical man of the day.... Mr. Percy White assuredly takes rank with the foremost of the society writers.’
The Globe.—‘A graphic picture of social life.’
The Glasgow Herald.—‘The characters are well conceived and cleverly portrayed; the dialogue is crisp and sparkling. There is not a dull moment in the volume.’
The Times.—‘Mr. White has written an audacious book.’
The Athenæum.—‘Mr. White, with the aid of the necessary qualities—dry humour and delicate irony—succeeds nearly all the time.... The character is one exceedingly difficult to portray.... Mr. White has resisted the temptation to force and exaggerate the note, and this is probably the secret of his success.’
The Speaker.—‘There is cleverness enough in Mr. Bailey-Martin to furnish forth a dozen novels.... It shows not only a remarkable knowledge of contemporary life, but a keen insight into character, and a considerable degree of literary power.’
The Daily Telegraph.—‘The book teems with smart sayings and graphic characterisations, and cannot fail to make a mark among the cleverest novels of the year.’
The Daily Chronicle.—‘The book must be pronounced a well-nigh unqualified triumph.’
The Literary World.—‘Mr. Bailey-Martin is one of those books whose opportune arrival serves to reconcile the critic to his task.... Bright, fresh, vigorous in action, and told with a wealth of incident and humour.’
The New Budget, in a criticism on Mr. Percy White as a novelist, says—‘In my opinion, you are by far the cleverest of the younger—or shall I say, youngest?—generation of writers, with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Street.... Your prose possesses in a high degree what I may call the lyrical note. At times you write like a poet rather than a writer of prose.... You serve in no school, and imitate no man.... In Mr. Bailey-Martin, though you write with an affectation of wholly dispassionate observation of your snob and his set, there is underlying that attitude a measureless contempt for your hero (if I may call him so) and his friends, which bites like an acid.’
The National Observer.—‘Admirably clever, and deserving to be read by those who are bored with the average novel.’
The Bookman.—‘One of the cleverest novels we have seen for many a day.... Take away from the average man a little of his affectation, and all his responsibilities; add some impudence, and the production of a Bailey-Martin is highly probable. We congratulate Mr. White on the vigour and vitality of his novel.’
The Scotsman.—‘When it is remembered that this story is told by Mr. Bailey-Martin himself, and with a great air of verisimilitude, it will be seen how able the book is as a piece of literature.... It will interest and entertain every one who takes it up.’
The Times.—‘All the stories are told by a man whose heart and soul are in his profession of literature.’
The Morning Post.—‘The discriminating will not fail to recognise in the tales composing this volume workmanship of a very high order and a wealth of imaginative fancy that is, in a measure, a revelation.’
The Athenæum.—‘The appearance of Terminations will in no way shake the general belief in Mr. Henry James’s accomplished touch and command of material. On the contrary, it confirms conclusions long since foregone, and will increase the respect of his readers.... With such passages of trenchant wit and sparkling observation, surely in his best manner, Mr. James ought to be as satisfied as his readers cannot fail to be.’
The Daily News.—‘Mr. James is a critic of life rather than a maker of stories; his appeal is more to the intellect than to the imagination. Terminations is a collection of four stories written with that choiceness and conciseness of phrase that distinguishes the work of the literary artist.... The Altar of the Dead is more mystic and imaginative. Mr. James finds phrases that express incomparably well the more spiritual longings of our nature, and this story is full of tender suggestiveness.’
The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘What strikes one, in fact, in every corner of Mr. James’s work is his inordinate cleverness. These four tales are so clever, that one can only raise one’s hands in admiration. The insight, the sympathy with character, the extraordinary observation, and the neat and dexterous phrasing—these qualities are everywhere visible.’
The Scotsman.—‘All the stories are peculiar and full of a rare interest.’
The Manchester Guardian.—‘... But with The Altar of the Dead it is far otherwise. To attempt to criticise a creation so exquisite, so instinct with the finest and purest human feeling, so penetrated with the fastidious distinction of a sensitive spirit, would indeed be superfluous, if not impertinent. On its own lines, we know of no more beautiful, truer prose poem in the English language, and to have written it is to have formulated a claim to recollection which we do not think will be lightly set aside.’
The National Observer.—‘Clever characterisation, natural dialogue, moral sanity, and keen observation and knowledge of the world.... The minor characters are as diverse as they are numerous, and there is not a lay figure in the book.’
The Daily News.—‘Herbert Vanlennert is good throughout. The analysis of the hero’s character is excellent. The story is crowded with minor characters, all clearly individualised and seen in nice relation to their surroundings. There is much power of observation, much knowledge of life and art displayed throughout.’
The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘A piece of life and a work of art.... Mr. Keary’s men and women are solid all through. He is as honest in his presentation of life as Mr. Gissing, but he is more pointed and wittier; he is less witty than Mr. Meredith, but he is more responsible.... Mr. Keary’s work stands out as a very brilliant piece of honest, knowledgable, wise artistry. We say it deliberately, that there are very few novels of our time that bear so unmistakably the grip of the master-hand as Herbert Vanlennert.’
The St. James’s Gazette.—‘A novel like this helps us at once to understand, to judge, and to enjoy life; and that is to say that he has written a novel of the kind that only the great novelists write. From time to time there comes a new novel marked by a kind and degree of excellence that compels praise of an emphatic kind. There need be no hesitation about deciding that Herbert Vanlennert is such a book.’
The Review of Reviews.—‘In Herbert Vanlennert indeed is a whole little world of living people—friends and acquaintances whom it is not easy to forget.’
The Sketch.—‘Full of cleverness and a legitimate realism. Of two of the most strongly marked and skilfully drawn characters, one is Maynard, the artist of genius; the other, a striking contrast to Maynard, is Bernard, who passes a serene existence in the study of metaphysics. Very charming and interesting are Mr. Keary’s bright and vivid descriptions of English country life and scenery in Derbyshire.’
St. Paul’s.—‘The book contains much clever writing, and is in many respects a strong one.’
Black and White.—‘There is abundance of skilfully drawn characters and brilliantly sketched incidents, which, once read, cannot be forgotten.’
The Scotsman.—‘Mr. Keary, even when he is treading on delicate ground, writes with circumspection and cleverness.’
The Bradford Observer.—‘It is a fine piece of art, and should touch its readers to fine issues.’
The Manchester Courier.—‘The book is most interesting, and embodies a great deal of careful work, besides some very plain speaking.’
The Literary World.—‘The novel is marked by great strength, which is always under subjection to the author’s gift of restraint, so that we are made to feel the intensity all the more. Pathos and humour (in the true sense) go together through these chapters; and for such qualities as earnestness, insight, moral courage, and thoughtfulness, The Years that the Locust hath Eaten stands out prominently among noteworthy books of the time.’
The Daily News.—‘Bears out to the full the promise given by Joanna Traill, Spinster. The author has a genuine sense of humour and an eye for character, and if she bids us weep at the tragedy of life and death, she makes us smile by her pleasant handling of human foible and eccentricities.’
The Standard.—‘A worthy successor to Joanna Traill, Spinster. It is quite as powerful. It has insight and sympathy and pathos, humour, and some shrewd understanding of human nature scattered up and down its pages. Moreover, there is beauty in the story and idealism.... Told with a humour, a grace, a simplicity, that ought to give the story a long reign.... The charm of the book is undeniable; it is one that only a clever woman, full of the best instincts of her sex, could have written.’
The Review of Reviews.—‘It has all the charm and simplicity of treatment which gave its predecessor (Joanna Traill, Spinster) its vogue.’
The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘The book should not be missed by a fastidious novel-reader.’
The Court Journal.—‘The moral of the book is excellent; the style strong and bold.’
The Scotsman.—‘The story is well told, and a vein of humour serves to bring the pathos into higher relief.’
The Manchester Guardian.—‘It is sincere and conscientious, and it shows appreciation of the value of reticence.’
The Manchester Courier.—‘The book is full of delicate touches of characterisation, and is written with considerable sense of style.’
The Glasgow Herald.—‘Worked out with great skill and success.... The story is powerfully told.’
The Liverpool Mercury.—‘The story is told with sympathy and pathos, and the concluding chapters are touching in the extreme.’
The Birmingham Gazette.—‘A sad story beautifully written, containing pure thoughts and abundant food for reflection upon the misery which exists in the world at the present day. The tale is particularly pathetic, but it is true in character. It will be read with interest.’
The Leeds Mercury.—‘Full of powerful situations.’
The Speaker.—‘Mrs. Lynn Linton commands the respect of her readers and critics. Her new story, In Haste and at Leisure, is as powerful a piece of writing as any that we owe to her pen.’
The St. James’s Budget.—‘A thorough mistress of English, Mrs. Lynn Linton uses the weapons of knowledge and ridicule, of sarcasm and logic, with powerful effect; the shallow pretences of the “New Woman” are ruthlessly torn aside.’
The Literary World.—‘Whatever its exaggerations may be, In Haste and at Leisure remains a notable achievement. It has given us pleasure, and we can recommend it with confidence.’
The Court Journal.—‘The book is a long but brilliant homily and series of object-lessons against the folly and immorality of the modern craze of the most advanced women, who rail against men, marriage, and maternity. The book is immensely powerful, and intensely interesting.’
The Daily Graphic.—‘It is an interesting story, while it is the most tremendous all-round cannonade to which the fair emancipated have been subjected.’
The World.—‘It is clever, and well written.’
The Graphic.—‘It is thoroughly interesting, and it is full of passages that almost irresistibly tempt quotation.’
The St. James’s Gazette.—‘It is a novel that ought to be, and will be, widely read and enjoyed.’
The Globe.—‘It is impossible not to recognise and acknowledge its great literary merit.’
The Glasgow Herald.—‘In Haste and at Leisure is a striking and even brilliant novel.’
The Manchester Courier.—‘In this cruelly scientific analyses of the “New Woman,” Mrs. Lynn Linton writes with all the bitterness of Dean Swift. The book is one of remarkable power.’
The Saturday Review.—‘Every page of it is worth reading. The author sets herself to write a fascinating book, and, in our opinion, has undoubtedly succeeded.’
The World.—‘There are good things in this novel; excellent character-drawing, some forcibly realistic chapters in the life of a common soldier.’
The Daily News.—‘The story is skilfully constructed, and will certainly add to Miss Robinson’s reputation.’
The Daily Chronicle.—‘Miss Robinson writes but little, and writes that little carefully.... Herein also is Miss Robinson true to life, and not false to art.’
The Realm.—‘The story is powerfully written. It is worth reading.’
The Standard.—‘All the vicissitudes of Treganna’s career are interesting, and are vividly told.’
The Lady.—‘A story of exceptional power and absorbing interest, earnest, forcible, intensely human, and of high literary merit.’
The Observer.—‘The book is very ably written, and it is well worth reading.’
The Globe.—‘There are in this book much power of observation, a relentless truthfulness, and a recognition of the value of detail. It should enchain the attention of the most callous reader.’
The Sunday Times.—‘A remarkably clever sketch of a man’s life and character.... The literary workmanship is good without being laboured.... We wish it the appreciation, not only of those who can distinguish good literature, but of those who prefer the good from the bad.’
Black and White.—‘An original plot vigorously treated.’
The Daily Graphic.—‘The whole story of the relations between Joseph Treganna and Fanny Star is very human, and handled with a breadth and understanding which very few women novelists of the day could hope to rival, while the gradual abandonment by the man of the outposts whereon he has planted his colours is admirable in its inevitableness.’
Woman.—‘A superb novel, strong and full of life, packed with observation and humour of the deep subcutaneous sort.’
The Times.—‘Miss Dixon shows herself no ineffective satirist of the shams and snobbishness of society.’
The Academy.—‘No one who reads The Story of a Modern Woman will be likely to gainsay the excellence of its writing, and the genuine talent shown by Miss Dixon.’
The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘A subtle study, written by a woman, about a woman, and from the point of view of a distinctly clever and modern woman herself.... Miss Dixon has scored a great success in the treatment of her novel.’
Vanity Fair.—‘The main thread of the story is powerful and pathetic; but there are lighter touches, wit and humour, and here and there what seem like shadows of people we have seen and known.... In a word, a book to buy, to read, and to enjoy.’
Black and White.—‘The social sketches, with which this little story of modern, literary, fashionable, and Bohemian London is full, are very cleverly touched in.’
The Graphic.—‘Miss Ella Hepworth Dixon has inherited no small share of her father’s literary gifts, and she adds to it a faculty of observation, and a constructive and narrative skill, which are of considerable promise.’
The National Observer.—‘She writes well, and shows not a little power of drawing character, and even of constructing a story.’
The Sketch.—‘Miss Dixon’s style excels in delicate vignettes, full of suggestion, and marked, above all, by that artistic restraint which is such an agreeable contrast to the fluency of the average woman-novel.’
St. James’s Gazette.—‘Miss Hepworth Dixon knows how to write.... She can say what she wants to say in a sound, clear style, which (especially in the descriptive passages) is occasionally very felicitous and expressive. Altogether, A Modern Woman is a work which will better repay reading than most of the novels of the season.’
Illustrated London News.—‘A story of which so much can truthfully be said is a contribution to art as well as to the circulating library, a conjunction which, in these days of British fiction, is surprising.’
The Athenæum.—‘The characters are exceptionally distinct, the movement is brisk, and the dialogue is natural and convincing.’
The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘Joanna Conway is on distinctly new lines, and it has given us pleasure to follow her spicy, attractive personality through all the phases of her carefully, finely-depicted evolution.’
The National Observer.—‘A remarkably life-like picture of English society. The author is a keen observer. The writing is above the average.’
The Daily Chronicle.—‘An excellent novel. Joanna Conway is one of the most attractive figures in recent fiction. It is no small tribute to the author’s skill that this simple country girl, without beauty or accomplishments, is from first to last so winning a personality. The book is full of excellent observation.’
Black and White.—‘Some pleasant hours may be passed in following the fortunes of Joanna, the charming heroine of M. Hamilton’s A Self-Denying Ordinance. The book is well written, and holds the attention from start to finish. The characters are true to life.’
The Methodist Times.—‘The story retains its interest throughout. It contains some vividly-drawn delineations of character.’
Woman.—‘Contains the finest, surest, subtlest character drawing that England has had from a new writer for years and years past.’
Public Opinion.—‘A well written and fascinating novel. It is a clever sketch of life in its different phases.... “Every personage strikes one as being richly endowed with individuality.”’
The Manchester Courier.—‘A decided success. There are such women as Joanna Conway in the world, though, unfortunately, not so many as are required; but there are few writers of the present day who can do justice to such a character, so poetical, and yet so practical.... There is humour in the book: the scene is chiefly in Ireland, and who can truly write of Ireland without humour? but the greatest charm is in the wonderful tenderness, in the womanly chivalry which renders so true the title of a self-denying ordinance.’
The Times.—‘Ably conceived, and ably-written stories.... Mr. Frank Harris has proved himself at once a subtle and effective writer of fiction.’
The National Observer.—‘Mr. Harris’s work leaves on the mind a vivid impression. All the stories in the volume are well written and admirably constructed.’
The Academy.—‘Page after page glows with masterly invention, tender pathos, excellent wit: attributes belonging to the magicians of fiction. Its cleverness is often near akin to absolute genius; the dexterity of the writer evokes not only surprises, but rare pleasure.’
The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘The characters are clearly defined and combined with great skill; they breathe genuineness and truth. There is force and pathos, too, in the story of Bancroft and Loo Conklin.’
The Review of Reviews.—‘There is a force and a charm, a vividness and an originality about these tales which give them a high, if not the highest, place in the literature of that kind which has been produced in the last few years, Not only is there a genius in the presentation of the human types which are described, but they display a closeness of observation and a keenness of insight into the heart of things which only those who have studied western civilisation in the making can appreciate.’
The Westminster Gazette.—‘The stories are masterpieces. They grip like life. And they live with one after, as living realities.’
The Sketch.—‘There is good workmanship in Mr. Harris’s volume, shows not merely in the vigorous story-telling. The inner idea in the tales is carefully wrought, and it will find a response among all readers who love sincerity.’
The Bookman.—‘Elder Conklin is a masterly picture of heroism and paternal love, of rare intensity and refinement, co-existing with capacities for hideous selfishness and cruelty.’
The Glasgow Herald.—‘Mr. Harris’s excellent stories may be heartily recommended to all.’