“The task of editing the MS. has been performed with scrupulous care. Its difficulty could hardly be exaggerated, for Mr. Freeman had at times only indicated the sources of the references. Our knowledge of this period is so meagre that we are grateful for the light thrown on it by the researches, unfortunately incomplete, of one who had made the subject peculiarly his own.”
| + + | The Westminster Review. 163: 231. F. ‘05. 180w. |
[*] Freeman, Mrs. Mary Eleanor (Wilkins). Debtor. [†]$1.50. Harper.
“The ‘Debtor’ preys upon his fellow-men because he has himself been ruined in business by a scoundrel, and has not the skill and strength to make an honest fight. His amiable, unreasoning wife, who thinks all creditors mean and vulgar persons; his worn and disillusioned sister, who knows all his faults, but fights for him to save the family; his queer little son with impish instincts and inherited traits ... and, above all, his innocent and faithful daughter, who really saves her father by the intensity and unselfishness of her love—all these are real people. So, too, are the creditors.”—Outlook.
[*] “As it is the novel seems to lack unity, and in spite of much subtlety and fine workmanship the effect is that of a succession of disconnected studies of character rather than of a single well-proportioned whole.”
| + — | Lond. Times. 4: 396. N. 17, ‘05. 400w. |
[*] “The first interest of the book lies in its fidelity to the small things that make up manners and customs.”
| + | Nation. 81: 488. D. 14, ‘05. 490w. |
[*] “One misses the crispness of style that marked ‘Pembroke’ and ‘Jerome’; one sometimes finds involved sentences and careless phrasing; but the reality, intensity, and force of the novel are remarkable.”
| + + — | Outlook. 81: 709. N. 25. ‘05. 270w. |