“The best one can say about Miss Sturgeon’s work is that it is the outcome of a wide knowledge of the poets and versifiers of her time. But she fails to do justice to whatever understanding of them that knowledge might have given to her.”
− + Ath p50 Jl 9 ’20 240w
“One does not receive in these pages the keen analysis, the subtle interpretation of contemporaries such as Arthur Symons gave to his public in ‘Studies in two literatures,’ but they do give an honest, workable survey of the figures and qualities among the contemporaneous poets of England that is serviceable and informative.” W. S. B.
+ Boston Transcript p6 O 13 ’20 840w
“The fact is that Miss Sturgeon’s criticism leans toward sentimentalism, and not only because she tends always to stress the good, the true, the perennially sad. Her writing clings too close to its matter even when she is at her best, which is in interpretation of the thought and melody in giving passages; and her exquisiteness of appreciation tends in one way or another to impede the flow of critical thought. One poet seems in retrospect very much like another.” C. M. Rourke
+ − Freeman 2:331 D 15 ’20 780w
“Miss Sturgeon’s book, taken with the necessary ‘grano salis,’ has much to recommend it. Its value as criticism would have been higher if Miss Sturgeon had not been so uniformly enthusiastic.” R: Le Gallienne
+ − N Y Times p8 O 17 ’20 1700w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p242 Ap 15 ’20 60w
STURGIS, ESTHER MARY (OGDEN) (MRS RICHARD CLIPSTON STURGIS). Personal prejudices. *$1.65 (4c) Houghton 814
20–16519