“Wilhelmine von Gravenitz was one of the most fascinating women of the eighteenth century. More passionate, and vastly more intelligent than La Pompadour, her French rival in intrigue and gallantry, she was a nobler type of woman, for she was really in love with Eberhard Ludwig, the reigning Duke of Wirtemburg, and though she played his dull and colorless wife many a cruel trick, and even attempted to assassinate her, our sympathies in spite of ourselves are stirred rather in the favour of the brilliant mistress than of the highly respectable but phlegmatic wife. To depict the life of a woman of this class in a lengthy narrative, without making her offensive, demands unusual insight into human nature.”—Sat. R.
“Her compromise between history and fiction is maintained throughout; she is always guiding herself by authentic facts, and her emotions are regulated by the documents at her side. And here lies the defect of the system. She cannot give her imagination free rein, and yet she may indulge it to such an extent that the reader does not know when he is reading history and when he is reading fiction. The ordinary reader will question whether the record of Wilhelmine might not give off a more pungent odour to other nostrils; and still more will he doubt whether this vagrant air is potent enough to steep three hundred and fifty odd pages with its fragrance. A magazine article or a sonnet were the proper vessel for such sweetness.”
– Acad. 71: 81. Jl. 28, ’06. 1170w.
“A notable piece of work. There is distinction in the style, and the writer shows such evident familiarity with the period and place involved, that certain objections which we feel should be made to the presentation of the narrative may with some show of reason be judged pedantic.”
+ + – Ath. 1906, 2: 96. Jl. 28. 2050w.
“The author writes with a clever woman’s knowledge of the human heart, but her style occasionally borders on the luscious. It is a book for the novel reader, not for the student.” Percy F. Bicknell.
+ – Dial. 41. 386. D. 1, ’06. 270w.
“The literary style is much inferior to the power of the narrative. We have unqualified gratitude to the authoress-historian for her labor of construction.”
+ – N. Y. Times. 11: 753. N. 17, ’06. 940w.