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.’
London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
FROM THE FIVE RIVERS
By FLORA ANNIE STEEL
In One Volume, price 6s.
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.’