“Professor Archibald Henderson is the modern counterpart of the old chronicler; they saw the romance and significance of events, he sees the romance and significance of ideas; he is a Hakluyt of ideas, of personalities.... His interests and his enthusiasms embrace the hemispheres.”—Black and White (London), April 22, 1911.
“Ce livre n'est pas seulement une étude magistrale sur la personnalité la plus compliquée de notre temps, il est aussi un exposé fort complet des divers mouvements d'idées qui ont agité l'Angleterre en ces derniers vingt-cinq ans.... Mr. Henderson mérite qu'on lui sache gré des six ans de labeur qu'il a consacrés à ce livre, qui restera un document des plus précieux.”—Henry D. Davray, in the Mercure de France (Paris), June 16, 1911.
“The reader's astonishment when the book is laid down is not at its length but at its brevity.... Here things regain their true proportions, and much of our astonishment and admiration for the book, its author, and its hero are due to this.... Nowhere does Dr. Henderson's critical faculty show to greater advantage than in his deductions as to the general aim of the plays.... Dr. Henderson is a critic before he is a biographer. There is nothing of the attitude of a Boswell in his work.... There remains the possibility that others may gauge the results of Shaw's secret with more acumen than he himself. There is no probability, however, that this will ever be done with more discretion, discernment, and distinction than by Mr. Henderson.”—Manchester Courier (England), April 11, 1911.
“An elaborate and detailed history of Bernard Shaw and his effects as a dramatist, Socialist, and general revolutionary.... George Bernard Shaw is looked at, sounded, discussed, examined, and appraised from every point of view.... It is a well into which all future students of Bernard Shaw will have to dip their buckets.... The biographical chapters are brimming over with lively anecdote.... In the three chapters devoted to Shaw as a dramatist, Mr. Henderson gives a critical analysis of the plays of G. B. S. which is as penetrating as it is painstaking, and will easily give him a front seat among Bernard Shaw's commentators.... Shaw's ... biographer has succeeded, and it is no small praise to say that throughout the whole of his book you feel that you are in the presence of a living personality....”—T. P.'s Weekly (London), April 21, 1911.
“This notable book ... is a long one, but we have noticed very few faults either in fact or of taste in reading it.... Nothing in it is so salutary as the final impression it leaves of the power to which a man can attain through the old-fashioned virtues of energy, industry, and determination.... As critic, political thinker, and dramatist, Mr. Shaw has managed to do a great deal of splendid work ...; and Dr. Henderson gives us a capital picture of it all.”—Pall Mall Gazette (London), April 11, 1911.
“A record which, in completeness, is unique among the Men of Our Time. What would we not give to know as much of some of the mighty intellects of the past!”—Daily Graphic (London), April 11, 1911.
“Acknowledgment should be made of Dr. Henderson's critical sanity.... A most interesting and weighty book. It is the nearest thing to that ideal autobiography which Mr. Shaw will never write, and is a worthy tribute to a man of whom this country ought to be proud.”—George Sampson, in the Daily Chronicle (London), April 11, 1911.
“The large and exceedingly handsome volume ... deals with its distinguished subject in every variety of aspect, while managing to remain itself both interesting and entertaining.”—Punch (London), May 10, 1911.
“Mr. Henderson's book is full of good things.... He analyses and explains, watches and reports, exploits the whys and retails the wherefores.... He is a searchlight....”—Sketch (London), May 3, 1911.
“Mr. Henderson's criticism of the plays of George Bernard Shaw is, indeed, acute and painstaking to an extraordinary degree.”—Lloyd's Weekly (Liverpool), April 30, 1911.