The Speaker.—‘This is the best book that Mr. Hall Caine has yet written, and it reaches a level to which fiction very rarely attains.... We are, in fact so loth to let such good work be degraded by the title of “novel” that we are almost tempted to consider its claim to rank as a prose epic.’
The Scotsman.—‘Mr. Hall Caine has in this work placed himself beyond the front rank of the novelists of the day. He has produced a story which, for the ingenuity of its plot, for its literary excellence, for its delineations of human passions, and for its intensely powerful dramatic scenes, is distinctly ahead of all the fictional literature of our time, and fit to rank with the most powerful fictional writing of the past century.’
The Athenæum.—‘Crowded with incidents.’
The Observer.—‘Many of the descriptions are picturesque and powerful.... As fine in their way as anything in modern literature.’
The Liverpool Mercury.—‘A story which will be read, not by his contemporaries alone, but by later generations, so long as its chief features—high emotion, deep passion, exquisite poetry, and true pathos—have power to delight and to touch the heart.’
The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘It is the product of a strenuous and sustained imaginative effort far beyond the power of any every-day story-teller.’
The Scots Observer.—‘In none of his previous works has he approached the splendour of idealism which flows through The Bondman.’
The Manchester Guardian.—‘A remarkable story, painted with vigour and brilliant effect.’
The St. James’s Gazette.—‘A striking and highly dramatic piece of fiction.’
The Literary World.—‘The book abounds in pages of great force and beauty, and there is a touch of almost Homeric power in its massive and grand simplicity.’