“A fine novel, beautifully written, ‘big’ in the best sense, which has nothing to do with size, a credit to American literature—for if its author is cosmopolitan, her novel, as much as ‘Ethan Frome,’ is a fruit of our soil.” H: S. Canby
+ N Y Evening Post p3 N 6 ’20 1100w
“By the side of the absolute mastery of plot, character and style displayed in her latest novel, ‘The house of mirth’ seems almost crude. Edith Wharton is a writer who brings glory on the name America, and this is her best book. It is one of the best novels of the twentieth century and looks like a permanent addition to literature.” W: L. Phelps
+ N Y Times p1 O 17 ’20 1950w
“Mrs Wharton’s new novel is in workmanship equal to her very best previous work. In its adequate dealing with a large motif this is a book of far more than ephemeral value.” R. D. Townsend
+ Outlook 126:653 D 8 ’20 620w
“The plot is unobvious, delicately developed, with a fine finale that exquisitely satisfies one’s sense of fitness, and as always with Mrs Wharton, the drama of character is greater than that of event. One revels recognizingly in her clean-cut distinction of style, the inerrant aptness of adjectives, the vivisective phrase.” Katharine Perry
+ Pub W 98:1195 O 16 ’20 520w
“The limitations of the present note on Mrs Wharton’s new story may be revealed by the confession that the annotator’s delight in it as a picture is greatly tempered by his distrust of its leading male figure. I don’t much like this Newland Archer, and I don’t quite believe in his existence; and this doubt curdles my faith in the integrity of the story as a whole.” H. W. Boynton
+ − Review 3:476 N 17 ’20 1100w