Miss Betham-Edwards, who gave us a few years ago “Home-life in France,” now gives equally intimate glimpses of the personality of some of the French men and women of letters. Some of the suggestive chapter headings are: Flaubert’s literary workshop, On the track of Balzac—Limoges. The genesis of Eugènie Grandet, In the footsteps of George Sand, Brantôme and The story of the Marseillaise.
“She gives with perfect success the atmosphere of the places and people that she writes about. That is, we imagine, all that she set out to do, and in any case all that was needed.”
| + − | Acad. 73: 698. Jl. 20, ’07. 510w. |
“Is in our opinion one of the best of her long series of monographs on French life and scenery. Her tendency to facile literary allusion takes her readers far from the scene she is describing. This is destructive of the French atmosphere which ought to characterize her books of travel.”
| + + − | Ath. 1907, 1: 757. Je. 22. 780w. |
“It is a pleasure to discover that [it] belongs, not to the appalling multitude of ‘popular guides,’ but to the small and delightful company of artistic and illuminating travellers’ sketches. They have, in the first place, the note of spontaneity.”
| + + | Dial. 43: 290. N. 1, ’07. 370w. |
“There never was a more staunch champion of Protestantism than Miss Betham-Edwards; and we take leave to think that a writer who hardly acknowledges any other religion in France cannot be said to know France thoroughly.”
| + − | Spec. 99: 266. Ag. 24, ’07. 1200w. |