NOTICES OF THE PRESS.
"We drop from fairy land to one almost as attractive in Ovind.... There is about it a delightful freshness."--Athenæum, Nov. 20, 1869.
"Ovind is thoroughly simple and genuine, a word-painting wonderfully like those Scandinavian pictures which most of us saw for the first time in the Exhibition of 1862.... Its subdued harmonious tones have a singular charm about them, and leave a very distinct impression."--The Spectator, Dec. 25, 1869.
"The tale is told in simple language with many quaint touches of humour."--Daily Telegraph, Dec, 24, 1869.
"The story relates simply, but very beautifully, the young loves of a peasant boy and a landowners grand-daughter, and introduces in the course of the narrative very many Norwegian customs."--Public Opinion, Dec. 11, 1869.
"The great merits of Björnson's literary style are his intense originality and unfaltering simplicity. All his writings are thoroughly true to nature, while the sombre scenery of his native land inspires him with a diction which we meet with in no other books, and is entirely his own."--The Examiner and London Review, Jan. 1, 1870.
"One of the most winning little stories we have ever read."--The Literary Churchman, Nov. 29, 1869.
"The translators are to be congratulated upon their successful rendering of the story, the publishers have also got up the book in a highly creditable manner. Altogether the translation is well worthy of all who are interested in Scandinavian literature."--Iron and Coal Trades Review, Dec. 22, 1869.
"Opens to us a field of freshness and beauty which never loses its charm for readers of all ages."--Standard, Jan. 26, 1870.
"It is not for the novelty of the story so much as for the fresh vivid picture it presents of peasant life in Norway that we commend the book to the English reader."--Trubner's American and Oriental Literary Record, Dec. 24, 1869.
"This is a charmingly simple and beautiful story ... It is as real as actual life, and as poetical as Milton's Paradise, not great with ponderous thoughts, but running over with exquisite poetry, suggesting new worlds of beauty lying under every day things.... A pure spiritual beauty, which the author has drawn from the simplest outward things in peasant life, lies over all the story, and bathes everything in the cool calm light of heaven."--The Border Advertiser, Dec. 19, 1869.
"The book is indeed redolent of country pastures, of sweet smelling pine woods, of happy, glad, unsophisticated Northern life.... It touches chords lying hidden in the depths of the mysteries of race and language, and moves us as, perhaps, no book of the warm but alien south could succeed in doing."--Northern Daily Express.
"The story has enough of originality, and of the foreign element, to make it quite worthy of translation and of general acceptance."--The Illustrated London News, July 23, 1870.
"We cannot speak too highly of the excellence of this translation. It reads as if it had been originally written in English."--The Manchester Weekly Times, June 11, 1870.