“We can only touch upon the comparatively minor characters. Lady Victoria Gwynne, half great lady, half libertine, is perhaps the only failure. The whole execution is carried as far as anything that Mrs. Atherton has yet attempted.”
| + + − | Lond. Times. 6: 341. N. 8, ’07. 1090w. |
“That Mrs. Atherton’s manner at times is somewhat rough cannot be denied. Thoughtful she is, and in a way penetrating, though quite without subtlety and grasping things more violently than is always to the taste of the over sensitive.”
| + − | Nation. 85: 377. O. 24, ’07. 480w. |
“Clever dialogue, sharp analysis, and unexpected turns of plot place it in Mrs. Atherton’s best vein.”
| + | N. Y. Times. 12: 653. O. 19, ’07. 40w. |
“Most of the characters ... have one phase in common. They are self-conscious and analytical. They see themselves, as it were, in a mirror, and it is with their eyes fixed on the reflection that they move. It is, then, the thinker in her reader that Mrs. Atherton arouses. Her descriptive powers are strong and individual. She gives us pictures of London, of San Francisco, and of the death throes of that city vivid as paintings, startling as a vitascope. She is not so happy in conveying an effect of the cataclysm on the people. They remain too self-conscious, they converse too much, they see themselves experiencing the experience.”
| + − | N. Y. Times. 12: 676. O. 26, ’07. 1120w. |
“If only her technique of construction equalled her frank and clear-eyed understanding of human nature she might be unhesitatingly placed very high among the exponents of the best realism.” Frederic Taber Cooper.
| + − | No. Am. 186: 607. D. ’07. 1320w. | |
| Outlook. 87: 451. O. 26, ’07. 110w. |