“He is often clever and always readable.”
+ Booklist 16:278 My ’20 Cleveland p84 O ’20 30w
“The advantage of this microscopic, literal measurement is that it prepares the way for an exact delineation of Jane Austen’s production and character. If the final picture lacks an inconsequent sureness, it is full of fine perspectives and fresh values.” C. M. Rourke
+ Freeman 1:549 Ag 18 ’20 760w
“He paints a sort of cubist portrait of Jane Austen, which would pass unrecognized were it not labeled with her name. He has succeeded in imagining a Miss Austen who is ‘one vile antithesis’. In ‘creative criticism’ does the critic create the author in his own image?” H. E. Woodbridge
− Nation 110:sup485 Ap 10 ’20 700w
“A book both new and worth reading. He has looked at Miss Austen more through his own eyes, and less through the eyes of her many illustrious eulogists, than any other writer I know of. Even when he is in harmony with the opinions of Miss Austen’s posterity one feels his first-handedness. Not one of his more heretical opinions exists for the sake of saying something new.”
+ − New Repub 22:318 My 5 ’20 1100w
“Although his book is written in so flowing and altogether charming a style that it is a pleasure to read it, I could not help wondering why he thought it worth doing at all. Certainly, no one that reads it will be tempted to fly to Jane Austen. Quite the contrary!” Gertrude Atherton