The Pall Mall Gazette.—'The appearance of a volume from Madame Serao's pen must now be reckoned as one of the treats of a publishing season. Few living writers have given us anything equal to her splendid story of the Neapolitan lotteries, "The Land of Cockayne," and it is much to say that those who were stirred to enthusiasm by that book will experience no reaction upon reading the two stories here bound together. It is easy enough to say that the intense directness of Madame Serao's work, or the completeness of vision and sympathy with which she sees her picture, is its secret; but genius is not too big a word for her, and genius has no communicable secret.'
The Sunday Special.—'Tense, passionate, and dramatic, are terms one can apply without exaggeration to "The Ballet Dancer."
The Saturday Review.—'The work of Madame Serao, a novelist with rare gifts of observation and faculties of execution, only needs a little more concentration on a central motive to rank among the finest of its kind—the short novels of realism. She curiously resembles Prosper Mérimée in her cold, impersonal treatment of her subject, without digression or comment, the drawing of clear outlines of action; the complete exposure of motive and inner workings of impulse; the inevitable developments of given temperament under given circumstances. She works with insight, with judgment, and with sincerity.'