| + + | Bookm. 26: 272. N. ’07. 1150w. |
“The story is a long one, and might be shortened to its advantage.” Wm. M. Payne.
| + − | Dial. 43: 318. N. 16, ’07. 400w. |
“The force of Mrs. Burnett’s book lies in its detail. There is detailed pathos, detailed joy and grief, detailed melodrama even; but it is all frankly discussed and accounted for, and the writer’s knowledge of various kinds of life serves her in good stead.”
| + + | Lond. Times. 6: 325. O. 25, ’07. 550w. |
“It is a story which would have a mild interest for most people and about which nobody could conceivably have much to say. Exception might be taken to the villain as a shade more diabolical then even the code of melodrama permits. He is an extravagant caricature of the sufficiently absurd wicked baronet of legend.”
| + − | Nation. 85: 474. N. 21, ’07. 430w. |
“Mrs. Burnett’s plot is stark nonsense, her American father a wierd exaggeration, her villain a Jack-in-the-box goggling on a coil of wire—but what of that? She is so kind, so honest, so free and splendid with her fairy gold, she loves her heroine, she admires her hero with such thoroughgoing ardor, that we want with all our hearts to make believe with her.”
| + − | N. Y. Times. 12: 625. O. 19, ’07. 1330w. | |
| N. Y. Times. 12: 653. O. 19, ’07. 50w. |
“Mrs. Burnett is a born story-teller, and her best is very good indeed; it is a pity that her judgment as to what is true art in fiction is sometimes seriously at fault.”