“A book of unusual power and passion—by far the best work in fiction that Mr. Phillpotts has put forth within the past two or three years. There are at least four characters in this book that are original in conception, carefully consistent throughout, and subtle in their psychological development. Altogether the situation is as strange as it is compelling in its force, and it is handled with skill and vigor. In all, this is a grim but forceful romance.”
| + + | Outlook. 79: 350. F. 4, ‘05. 240w. |
“It is a story of terrible frankness, dealing without evasion with the elemental forces of the human tragedy, but without morbid interest or curiosity, and binding the penalty to the sin.”
| + | Outlook. 79: 773. Ap. 1, ‘05. 100w. |
“Assuredly the best novel of Mr. Eden Phillpotts.”
| + + | R. of Rs. 31: 756. Je. ‘05. 230w. |
“His themes are simple, but they are far too heavily orchestrated. Thus his style, though marked by fine descriptive passages, threatens to become laboured and ornate, and is occasionally disfigured by recondite epithets and literary preciosities. He seems to us to err by the artificial and deliberate invention of incidents designed to enhance the tragic quality of the narrative, by a piling up of the agony which defeats its own aim, and suggests the element of gratuitousness where all should march inevitably to the crowning catastrophe.”
| + — | Spec. 94: 331. Mr. 4, ‘05. 1130w. |
Picard, George H. Bishop’s niece, [†]$1.25. Turner, H. B.
“Although the comic element is the last that one expects in a story of ‘mixed marriages,’ that is to say of matrimonial alliances between Catholic and Protestant, it is really very droll, thanks to the demure eccentricity of his pacific Lordship, the Bishop of Isle Madame, and the contrasted orthodoxy of his brother, a domineering layman.”—N. Y. Times.