The Illustrated London News.—“All must recognise the boundless charity, the literary power, and the intense sincerity of one of the most interesting works of the year.”
The late Mr. B. Fletcher Robinson, in Daily Express.—“There are two Coulson Kernahans. The one is a novelist who loves a good plot, and a dashing adventure; the other a serious thinker who rises to imaginative heights in his efforts to pierce the mystery that cloaks the future life of us poor mortals.”
The Times.—“He is perhaps the hundredth individual who in recent fiction has devoted himself to amateur detection, and he is certainly ‘one in a hundred’ as regards his exceptional success.... This simple sample must suffice for extract, but we may assure the reader that there are plenty more where it came from.”
World.—“A writer of fiction who has come among us carrying Aladdin’s lamp—imagination.... Bold and brilliant in inception.... Deep and tender humanity pervades the whole work.”
Literary World.—“A man with a command of beautiful English with exquisite insight into the poetry of life and with the delicate touch of the rare literary critic.... A volume of delightful essays, almost Lamblike in their tender pathos and humour.”
New York World (U.S.A.).—“The strongest stories that have been written in many a long day. No one who is guilty of sin can read these stories without realising their truth. They are like Conscience sitting alone with him staring him steadily sternly in the face.... This spiritual rhapsody shows you one facet of this brilliant Irishman’s genius. Turn to the Literary Gent, and you will see another utterly different—fearful, almost cruel.”
Boston Herald (U.S.A.)—“A book which must certainly be accounted one of the pronounced literary successes of the time. It has gone through various editions in America, as well as in England, and I think no one who has read it could ever quite escape from its haunting spell. It contains passages of poetic prose, which no lover of the beautiful will overlook, and its appeal to the consciences of men is even more strenuous. I am not surprised to hear that the first English edition of 2000 copies was exhausted a few days after publication.”
Louise Chandler Moulton (U.S.A.) in Syndicate Article, “Four Modern Men.”—“A story which Hawthorne might have been content to sign.... Two prose-poems which to my mind far surpass the prose-poems of Turgenieff.... This has been compared to Mrs. Gatty’s Parables from Nature, but Mrs. Gatty has never written anything to rank with it for poetic charm. To find this exquisite and tender idyl among these tragedies of shipwrecked souls is like hearing the divine note of the nightingale through the stress and clamour of a tempest.”
[In collaboration with the late Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson.]
Mr. Edmund Gosse, C.B., in the Illustrated London News.—“Where so many skilful hands have tried to produce rival anthologies, these two, each in its own class, preserve their unquestionable superiority. Mr. Locker-Lampson has been helped in re-publication by Mr. Coulson Kernahan, who has entered into the elegant spirit of the Editor, and has continued his labours with taste and judgment.”