Savage Keith Rickman, son of a cockney book dealer, has in him the divine fire of genius which burns within him until, with the passing years, all the grosser parts of his personality are consumed. When the book opens he has written a tragedy, a classical thing, which makes friends for him among the critics even though they do not ask him home to dine because he is “not quite a gentleman.” In fact “his notion of pleasure was getting drunk and making love to Miss Poppy Grare,” of the Variety theatre. His meeting with Lucia Harden, typical of refinement and tradition, on whom he inflicts almost physical suffering when he “drops his aitches,” gives him an ideal to work toward, and he is never really untrue to it, even when he is engaged to marry Flossy, the little clerk. With a sense of honor almost too keen for the world in which he lives, he struggles on as journalist and poet until he reaches success, fame and his ideals. The book is unusual in its strength of plot and character, and it is most real when it forsakes the ideal and tells us that even the divine fire cannot shut out the coarser cravings of a man’s nature when he is young, a genius half-awake.
“Has an acceptable style, in all ways suited to the matter it embodies, a style with flexibility and humor employing a large vocabulary, cultivated and agreeable. As yet, she lacks that final touch of mastery by which a line condenses the whole result of ingenious mental processes.”
| + + — | Atlan. 95: 699. My. ‘05. 630w. |
“Author has accomplished the difficult feat of taking a genius for its hero and making him seem plausible. A sound plot. Its faults are mainly those of excess. But no page bears evidence of careless work. It shows throughout unusual knowledge and an unusual degree of skill in applying it, and it ranks unmistakably among the best of recent novels.” F. M. Colby.
| + + + | Bookm. 21: 66. Mr. ‘05. 1070w. |
“One does not hesitate to pronounce this book literature. A keen understanding, an ethical interpretation, and a lyric style have combined to produce one of the noblest, most inspiring, and absorbing books we have read in years.”
| + + + | Cath. World. 81: 129. Ap. ‘05. 110w. |
“It is scarcely a spontaneous work of genius; but it is at least a brilliant piece of workmanship, of unusual range and power. The comfortably ample canvas abounds in masculine characters, and it is not too much to say that there is not a failure, not even a commonplace achievement, among them. In dealing with her small group of women the author’s penetration becomes blunter, her power weakens. Supremely interesting. Admirably constructed. A positive hardness, almost a lack of fineness, somewhat disqualify her as a ‘mouthpiece of humanity.’” Olivia Howard Dunbar.
| + + — | Critic. 46: 183. F. ‘05. 630w. |
“Drawn with a firmness of hand that excites one’s admiration. It rises, moreover, to real distinction of style, besides being of absorbing interest from cover to cover. It is the sort of book that one begins by skimming, and ends by giving the closest attention to paragraph and phrase.” W. M. Payne.