+ Ath p62 F ’19 2100w Booklist 17:112 D ’20
“All the details in this volume are of surpassing interest, and it contains not a little acute criticism of Meredith’s novels. The work as a whole is an exceptional pen portraiture of a literary personality who was as great and influential as he was interesting.” E. F. E.
+ Boston Transcript p6 S 25 ’20 1350w
“Written without any distinction of style, Mr Ellis’s contribution belongs to that class of biographical work which owes its existence to the fact that some one or other has known, or been connected with, a famous man and is able to satisfy, by the composition of a book of this kind, the promptings of his own personal egotism.” Llewelyn Powys
− Freeman 2:189 N 3 ’20 740w
“That Meredith, in Evan Harrington, misinterpreted and, as the biographer holds, maligned the character of Mr Ellis’s grandparents may, or may not, have been a contributing cause of the publication of this rather shallow and rather malicious book. Certain it is that George Meredith was on no very friendly terms with his Ellis cousins, and the reader must be warned of the evident animus on the part of the biographer.” S. C. C.
− + New Repub 25:267 Ja 26 ’21 1200w
“Mr Ellis’s book on Meredith is to be welcomed, though it appears to be in no sense an ‘official’ biography and though it is not written in a manner which could have pleased Meredith himself. It is neither an ‘inspired’ exposition of his career nor a book which could be counted excellent on its own independent merits. But it is the only biography in existence.”
+ − New Statesman 12:378 F 1 ’19 2050w
“What should have been a great portrait is only a rather ordinary photograph. He is painstaking and accurate enough. Any one who is interested in Meredith can gather from this book much which he will be glad to know. But he will seek in vain and with growing exasperation for the things which are really needful.” W. H. Durham