Reviews of GA's work
An Annotated Bibliography of Contemporary Reviews
Last revised: 25 Jan 2015
This is a partial guide to reviews of Grant Allen’s work which appeared (for the most part) soon after the first publication. These are mostly short notices and anonymous reviews, listed by title of the work. Substantial, signed review-articles appear on another page.
Place of publication is London or New York, unless stated otherwise. I’m grateful to many people who have given me leads to these references. This is a guide only; it makes no claim to completeness.
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African Millionaire
Literary World, 29:5 (5 March 1898)
Bookman (NY), 6 (February 1898), 564.
Bookman (London), 12 (August 1897), 128.
Times , 15 September 1897, 12.
Dial, 23 (Jul/Dec 1897), 391.
Anglo-Saxon Britain
Nature, 24 (13 Oct 1881), 566. ‘He has taken pains to master all the results of recent research in archaeology and ethnology, and therefore the book has a more scientific flavour than usual with such works’.
Academy, 20 (19 Nov 1881), 377-8. An approving review stressing GA’s grasp of the historical and especially the etymological evidence.
Athenaeum, 1 April, 1882, 411.
At Market Value
Athenaeum, 104 (29 September 1894), 418
Critic, 27 (12 October 1895), 231.
Bookman (London), 7 (October 1894), 27
Spectator, 73 (27 October 1894), 566.
Babylon
Literary World, 17 (20 March 1886), 6.
Spectator, 58 (October1885), 1341. ’Very bright and very amusing… That it stands far above the average of contemporary fiction goes without saying.’
The Times, 20 October 1885.
New York Times, 18 January 1902, 43, col.3.
Athenaeum, 21 Nov 1885, 665-6.
Academy, 28 (1885), 251-2.
Pall Mall Gazette, 42 (Oct 1885), 5. The Babylon of the title is Rome. ’The book justifies itself amply. It is fresh, entertaining, and pleasant from beginning to end. The author has kept in check his peculiar power of weird and fantastic realism, or realistic fantasy, if that seem less paradoxical; but he has proved himself equally at home in the observation of commonplace character, and the reproduction of everyday life’. It contains much padding.
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 11 (1885-6), 481-7. Probably by W.D. Howells. Criticises the clichéd depiction of an American character and comments: 'Apparently Mr. Allen has not thought it a serious thing to write a novel, nor human nature worth that honest inquiry which has given him an honorable name in science. This is a mistake which we hope he will come to regret' (485).
Beckoning Hand
Academy, 31 (26 Feb 1887), 144. 'too many of his affectionate damsels are sadly commonplace. ‘It is not difficult to recognise the great chemist and naturalist who served as Professor Milliter’s prototype; but his dilemma is much more powerfully described than his release’.
Athenaeum, 2 April 1887, 447.
’More Strange Stories,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 45 ( 17 Feb 1887), 5. This reviewer thought Prof. Milliter was Faraday! ‘We should be grateful for even a momentary escape from Mr Allen’s Edies, and Louies, and Emilys, and Rubies, and Ethels, and Doras, and Nettas, and Millies. These young ladies are all precisely alike, cut scrupulously to the pattern of the middle-class magazine heroine.’ 5
Biographies of Working Men.
Pall Mall Gazette, 40 (5 Aug 1884), 5.
Blood Royal
Academy, 43 (1893), 151.
Athenaeum, 4 Feb 1893), 149-51.
Bookman (London), 3 (February 1893), 162. ’a bright, impossible story, written in Mr Grant Allen’s best mood’.
British Barbarians
Athenaeum, 106 (14 December 1895), 830. ’His latest manifesto is intended to be a scathing satire on our social customs . . . . The idea is not very smartly worked, and has little of the subtlety necessary to make the thing go. Now and again there are touches bordering on the amusing, but not often.’
Critic, 28 (7 March 1896), 157
New York Times, 18 December 1895, 10, col.4. See also 4 August 1895, 27, col. 1.
Woman, 20 November 1895, 6. By Arnold Bennett, signed ‘Barbara’.
Spectator, 75 (23 November 1895), 722.
[H.G. Wells]. Saturday Review, 80 (14 December 1895), 785. Reprinted in H.G. Wells’s Literary Criticism. Edited by Patrick Parrinder and Robert M. Philmus. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1980, pp.59-61. A negative review, even though the theme of this novel is startlingly like Wells' own recent The Wonderful Visit. ‘To consider such a production as a work of art would be absurd. . . . Judged from this point of view, his book is redolent of bad taste and bad English, destitute alike of dramatic incident and character analysis. . . . True, Mr Allen takes occasion to say a good many things that require saying . . let him call his sermon a sermon and be content. . . futile alike as an ethical treatise and as a work of fiction.’ 61.
Catullus’ Attis
Academy, 43 (1893), 97.
Cambridge Review: A Journal of University Life and Thought, 14 (4 May 1893), 318. ’We have, he says in effect, from Mr Spencer the statement that we must start with ghost-worship and from Mr Frazer the information that tree-worship is a common phenomenon. Very well; no doubt both these eminent men are right. If they seem to disagree, we have merely to pop the ghost into the tree, and their views are identical…. We need hardly say that Mr Allen defends his view with much ingenuity and force; but he does not display the erudition and patience in research which is required to develop his theory properly.’
Charles Darwin
Romanes, G.J. ‘Allen and Kraus on Charles Robert Darwin,’ Nature, 33 (1885/6), 147,
Literary News (Jan 1886)
Mind (Jan 1886), 122.
Pall Mall Gazette, 42 (4 Nov 1885), 5. A very positive review, particularly praising the chapters on the Origin of Species, the Descent, and the theory of courtship.
The Week, 3:3 (Dec 1885), 43.
Cities of Northern Italy (with George C. Williamson)
Dial, 41 (July/ZDec 1906), 392.
Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 39 (1907), 382-3.
Classical Rome
Lord, J.K. Classical Journal, 7:7 (April 1912), 318-9.
Colin Clout’s Calendar
New York Times, 21 September 1901, 667, col.2
Colour Sense
Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 2 (1879-80), 250.
Mind, 4 (January 1879), 144-145
New York Daily Tribune, 15 April 1879, 6, col.1.
London: The Conservative Weekly Journal, 5 (1 Mar 1879), 176-7. This anonymous ‘rave’ review reads suspiciously like GA himself.
Athenaeum, 31 May 1879, 698-9.
James Sully, Mind, 4 (July 1879), 415-21.
Colours of Flowers
New York Times, 26 February 1883, 3, col. 1.
Nature, 27 July 1882, 299; 3 Aug 1882, 323; 10 Aug 1882, 346; 17 Aug 1882, 371.
Athenaeum, 3 Feb 1883, 152-4.
Common Sense Science
Athenaeum, 21 May 1887), 676.
Dial, 7 (1886/7), 295.
Science, 10:231 (8 July 1887), 20.
Literary News, April 1887, 120.
County and Town in England
Nation, 71 (3 April 1902), 271.
Desire of the Eyes
American Weekly, 27 February 1897.
Athenaeum (Jul-Dec 1895), 268.
Devil’s Die
Spectator, 2 April 1888
New York Daily Tribune, 4 November 1888, 14, col.3.
Athenaeum,5 May 1888, 563-4..
Academy, 33 (1888), 303.
Duchess of Powysland
Athenaeum, 99 (20 February 1892), 340
Spectator, 68 (2 April 1892), 469,
Athenaeum, (Jan-Jun 1892), 240.
Academy, 42 (1892), 346.
The Week, 9:7 (Jan 1892), 108.
Dumaresq’s Daughter
Athenaeum, 24 Oct 1891), 546.
Harper’s Magazine, 84 sup3-4 (January 1892), 326
Spectator, 28 October 1891
New York Daily Tribune, 29 November 1891, 18, col.3.
Academy, 40 (1891), 428.
Literary News, November 1891, 342.
European Tour
Nation, 69 (26 October 1899), 322-323
The Times, 24 October 1899
Academy, 57 (14 Oct 1899), 429. 'breathless haste and the utmost confidence’. ‘The book is the completest piece of literary buttonholing we have ever seen. Mr Allen holds his pupils and talks to them for three hundred pages. Nothing but the circumstance that the end of the work is reached puts an end to the amazing vivacity, vigour, knowledge, and dogmatism of this lightning Baedeker—this bovrilised Murray’. Do this; go there; avoid this; on no account do that, says Mr Allen, resorting for emphasis to various typographical devices’ 428.
Outlook, 4 (1899), 381.
Dial, 27 (July/Dec 1899), 134.
Evolution in Italian Art
J.W. Slaughter, Sociological Review, 3 (1910), 177.
Dial, 45 (Jul/Dec 1908), 407.
Burlington Magazine, 16 (Oct 1909), 248-9
The Evolutionist at Large
Athenaeum, 27 Aug 1881, 278-9.
Nature, 24 (12 May 1881), 27-28. ‘Nearly all the fresh lights which have been thrown upon the relations of the natural world by the teachings of Darwin and Herbert Spencer are here condensed and exhibited in the most simple gossiping style….’ (27) Of periodicals etc: ‘their readers find a royal road to learning the contents of books which they are too hurried to read in full, in short essays which collect the essence, omit the difficulties, and state the conclusions of the writers in the clearest and most unqualified terms’. Fairly typical of de haut en bas tone which Nature took to all of Allen’s popular science.
Academy, 19 (1881), 227-8. ’it is not often that a daily paper finds room for scientific studies amid its crowd of political and social topics; but the papers here thrown together were fortunate enough to obtain a place in the columns of the St. James’s Gazette. Mr Allen’s success is really one large success; in having succeeded in penning a series of scientific sketches acceptable to a leading political paper he did something worthy of permanent record’
The Evolution of the Idea of God
Marcel Mauss. LÁnnee Sociologique, 2 (1897-8), 193.
’C’, ‘From Ghosts to Gods,’ Daily Chronicle, 10 Dec 1899.
George A. Coe, Philosophical Review (Mar 1898), 210-12.
Literary Digest, 16:10 (5 March 1898)
Literary World, 29:1 (8 January 1898)
Book Reviews; a Monthly Journal Devoted to New and Current Publications, 5:8 (February 1898)
Joseph Jacobs, Athenaeum, 110 (20 November 1897), 700-1. A scathing attack, accusing GA of plagiarism.
Bookman, 7 (April 1898), 164
Bookman (London), 13 (Jan 1898), 126-7
Mind (Dec 1899)
New York Times, 19 February 1898, 114, col. 1. See also 7 May 1898, 309, col.1.
Overland Monthly (February 1898).
Nation, 66 (24 March 1898), 231
Overland, s2 31 (February 1898), 188
H.G. Wells, ‘Grant Allen’s Idea of God,’ Daily Mail, 27 Nov 1897.
H.G. Wells, ‘On Comparative Theology,’ Saturday Review, 85 (12 Feb 1898), 212-13.
Frederick Starr. ‘Mr Grant Allen as an anthropologist: Evolution of the Idea of God [review],’ Dial, 24 (6 Jan 1898), 45-6.
Monist, 8 (1898), 627.
C.E. St John, New World, 6 (1897), 780.
Folklore, 9 (Mar 1898), 63-66.
American Journal of Psychology, 9:3 (April 1898), 414.
Falling in Love
American Way, 19:496 (8 [6?] February 1890.
Athenaeum, 28 Dec 1889, 887-8.
Blackwood’s Magazine, 147 (January 1890), 145-9
Dial, 10 (April 1890), 341
Nation, 50 (27 February 1890), 187
New York Daily Tribune, 31 January 1890, 10, col.1. See also 3 November 1890, 8, col.1.
Flashlights on Nature
L.C.M. Nature, 59 (19 Jan 1899), 268. ‘a bright and amusing account of a number of natural structures and problems. . . He has rewritten Kerner’s account of the Soldanella, the frog-bit and the curled pondweed, and adapted Kerner’s figures of all three, without one word of acknowledgment’ (268). GA offered no comment on this.
Flowers and their Pedigrees
Athenaeum, 10 Nov 1883, 604-5.
American Weekly, 6 Feb 1890
Catholic World (May 1884)
The Manhattan (May 1884), 515-6.
Dial, 5 (1884/5), 16.
H.N.R. Nature, 30 (19 June 1884), 167-168. Raises several technical objections, though praises that ‘easy and fluent style in which Mr Allen is so proficient’ (168).
For Maimie’s Sake
Athenaeum, 27 Feb 1886, 293-5.
Atlantic Monthly, 57 (May 1886), 718. 'Mr. Allen makes a desperate effort to imagine a state of society in which morals have only a historical interest. He seems to have said to himself, Let me see; how would a girl act who had been brought up entirely without the limits of Christian training, but within the limits of modern society? He reaches certain momentous, conclusions, but he never, from first to last, forgets that she puts up her mouth to be kissed. This she does at every possible opportunity. The book is a foolish piece of work, and Mr. Allen ought to have known it when he finished writing. As a satire upon a possible agnostic society it is worthless, and as anything else it is weak and tawdry as well.'
Academy. 'FMS is a book that every one who has made acquaintance with the stories signed by ‘J. Arbuthnot Wilson’ will naturally take up with pleasure. Pleasurable anticipation soon becomes interest, and this interest must rapidly grow into absorbed attention. The humour throughout the first part of Mr Allen’s story is delightful. The reader falls in love with laughing, lovely, unconventional Maimie’.
Time. ’This is a very remarkable book. Maimie is essentially human, intensely womanly, and there is something so bewitching in her childish ignorance, something so innocent in her wickedness, that we can understand her friends’ and her lovers’ infatuation for her… There is power of a very high order in writing which can so consistently, yet without the smallest effort, concentrate the reader’s attention on the sinner as apart from the sin. There is not a character in the book which fails to interest us, and the writing is, of its kind, faultless’.
Anon. Pall Mall Gazette, 43 (4 Mar 1886), 5.
Great Taboo
Academy, 38 (1890), 561.
Athenaeum, 29 Nov 1890), 734-5
Literary Notes. Harper’s Magazine, 82 (3 May 1891, C002-3.
Spectator, 65 (6 December 1890), 807
New York Daily Tribune, 22 February 1891, 14, col.3.
Hilda Wade
Saturday Review, 25 May 1900, 657.
Pratt, C.A. Nation, 71 (23 August 1900), 156.
Critic, 37 (September 1900), 275-6
New York Times. Books and Literary Topics. Grant Allen’s New Novel Hilda Wade. 9 June 1900, 382, column 1. See also 7 July 1900, 459, col. 1; 15 September 1900, 613, col.2; 15 September 1900, 916, col.4 .
In All Shades
Athenaeum, 6 Nov 1886, 596-8.
Anon. ‘A Tale of West Indian Life,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 44 ( 19 Nov 1886), 4-5. ’Nora Dupuy is a true, brave, eminently lovable woman, and stands out in these pages as a an eminently charming as well as characteristic figure…. On the whole, this is a story of unusual excellence’.
Academy, 30 (1886), 323.
Anon. Pall Mall Gazette, 19 November 1886.
Literary News, October 1888, 311.
Incidental Bishop
Literary World 29:12 (11 June1898)
Athenaeum, 111 (2 April 1898), 433
The Times, 20 April 1898.
Pearson’s Weekly, 406 (30 April 1898).
New York Times, 7 May 1898, 309, col.1.
Outlook, 1 (1898), 278.
In Nature’s Workshop
Outlook, 6 (1900), 831.
Ivan Greet’s Masterpiece
Athenaeum, 101 (24 June 1893), 794
Bookman, 4 (June 1893), 90. ’very readable. But, in spite of the inference to be drawn from the preface, there is nothing appallingly audacious in any of them. The world still looks for that splendid bit of audacity hid away in Mr Allen’s desk’. He cannot write an artistic story, but he can write an amusing and pathetic one.
Linnet
Athenaeum, 10 December 1898
Bookman (January 1899)
Payne, William Morton. Dial, 1 September 1901
Spectator, 10 December 1898
The Times, 6 April 1899
New York Times, 15 September 1900, 613, col.2.
Lower Slopes
’Mr Grant Allen’s Poetry,’ Athenaeum, 24 March 1894, 367-368. A savage review alluding at length to GA’s oft-repeated wish to write frankly, daring him to do so.
‘The Poems of Grant Allen (The Muse of Evolution),’ Month, 81 (June 1894), 166.
Academy, 31 March 1894
Bookman, 5 (March 1894), 188. ‘It is this same passion for the people that inspires two the most remarkable poems in the book, ‘Mylitta’ and ‘Sunday Night at Mabille,’ full of bitter indignation for the victims, caught, and be-garlanded, and killed, to keep the domestic hearth safe and holy’.
Critic, 28 July 1894.
Spectator, 10 December 1898.
William Morton Payne. Dial, 16 (1 May 1894), 274.
Poet Lore [Washington], 5 (1893), 644.
Miss Cayley’s Adventures
Athenaeum, 17 June 1899
Spectator, 13 May 1899
Payne, William Morton. Dial, 16 September 1899. 'pleasant, unprofitable reading, and holds the attention throughout.'
The Times, 23 July 1899
Literature, 20 May 1899, 527.
Outlook, 3 (1899), 591.
Dial, 27 (July/Dec 1899), 176.
Moorland Idylls
Nature, 52 (26 Mar 1896), 486. ‘The description of scenes of pastoral life . . . have, we believe, already appeared in one of the monthly magazines, though no reference is made to that fact. They may be regarded as science diluted with sentiment, and that is the kind of literature which the average man or woman will sometimes read . . . The sympathetic spirit in which they are written will attract lovers of nature’ (486).
Bookman (May 1896).
Paris
New York Times, 15 December 1900, 916, col.4.
Dial, 29 (July/Dec 1900), 500.
Burlington Magazine, 16:79 (October 1909), 54. Reviews shortly both Paris and Venice, then being frequently reprinted.
Philistia
Athenaeum (Jul-Dec 1884), 767.
Academy, 26 (1884), 337. ’A book displaying considerable cleverness…Very readable and clever’.
St James’s Gazette. ’A very clever, well-written novel, full of freshness and originality’.
Physiological Aesthetics
Daily News, 29 June 1877.
Popular Science Review, 16 (1879), 297-8.
Academy, 13 (1878)
Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’etranger, 5 (1878-9).
Canadian Monthly and National Review, 12:01 (Jul 1877), 9899.
C.M. O’Leary, ‘New Theory of Aesthetics,’ Catholic World, 36 (1878), 471.
J.T. Sully, Mind, 2:7 (July 1877), 387-392.
Post-prandial Philosophy
Athenaeum, 12 May 1894, 611. ‘The kinds of opinions enunciated here and their method of expression are just what one might hear at any dinner party in town where there happened to be a fairly clever young Oxford man just fresh from college. . .’
Spectator, 28 April 1894
Bookman, 6 (May 1894), 58. ‘at his best and gracefullest when he is talking, giving us his opinions of life and modern society in so light, bright, and genial a fashion that we are almost persuaded he is superficial .. But these after-dinner talks . . are stimulating, courageous, suggestive and humorous, and there is much honest thinking at the back of them. They represent the new journalism modified by brains, gracefulness, and some genius. Mr Allen’s revolutionarism has a smiling, winsome way about it, and even his foes on political and social subjects will hardly quarrel with him.’
Times, 22 Mar 1894, 3.
Recalled to Life
Locke, George. The Armchair Detective, 7:2 (February 1974)
New York Daily Tribune, 13 October 1891, 8, col.1.
Academy, 40 (1891), 356.
Athenaeum, 10 Oct 1891, 481.
Literary News, November 1891, 342.
Rosalba
Athenaeum, 15 July 1899.
Scallywag
Academy, 44 (1893), 364.
Athenaeum, 23 September 1893, 414. 'Some of the author’s admirers may be disposed to think this is one of the best novels he has written, and, at any rate, it has many good points.'
Blackwood’s Magazine (November 1893)
Bookman, 5 (October 1893), 26-7. Perceptive review which makes point that GA is a philistine despite himself. He tolerates views of life that are not his own, but because he is not a great artist all they do is fill his novels with bonhomie and pleasantness. ‘Yet if a novel of Mr Grant Allen’s were to survive for a century or two, though it would reveal no essential facts of life and society in our time, it would not be valueless, for a certain superficial tone and accent of the educated middle classes would be nowhere better reflected.’ That is a shrewd point.
Westminster Gazette, 2 (18 Sep 1893), 3. ‘everyone might not know that the word means “poor gentleman”.’
Science in Arcady
Nature, 47 (22 Dec 1893), 173. Brief notice: ‘will fully maintain Mr Grant Allen’s reputation as a popular writer on science. The essays of which it consists are written in a bright, lively style, and may be read with pleasure even by original investigators, for the truths with which they deal, if not new, are at least presented from new points of view’ (173).
Saturday Review, 74 (31 Dec 1892), 782. Paragraph notice: ‘pleasant and various meditations’.
The Week, 12:13 (Feb 1895), 303.
Splendid Sin
Athenaeum, 31 Oct 1896
Bookman (October 1893)
Saturday Review, 21 November 1896. By H.G. Wells.
Story of the Plants.
‘“ Parturiunt Montes”,’ Nature, 52 (15 Aug 1895), 364-365. A merciless review, picking up a number of technical errors: ‘tells the story of plants in a readable and very inaccurate manner…. All we can say is that those readers who are ignorant of the real facts may find the book pleasant, though we can hardly add profitable, reading’ (364-5).
Popular Science Monthly (November 1895)
New York Times, 4 August 1895, 27, col. 7.
Literary News, September 1895, 266-7.
Strange Stories
Littledale, R.F. Academy, 26 (1884), 387-8.
Athenaeum, 2 (1884), 768-9. ’No one will be able to say that the stories are dull. The lighter stories can be read with pleasure by everybody, and the book can be dipped into anywhere without disappointment. One and all, the stories are told with a delightful ease and with an abundance of lively humour.’
Pall Mall Gazette, 40 ( 27 Nov 1884), 5. Complains that two of GA’s most successful figures, Creedy and the Curate of Churnside, are both clergymen, so that he will be accused of a purpose other than artistic.
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 9 (1884-5), 486-93. Says GA has 'plenty of the scientific imagination, which he can divert at will into the paths of romance' (491–92), and he 'has, in fiction, a field of his own, the romance of science'. Advises that 'it would be worth his while to make himself still more accomplished in this art, and, perhaps, to take himself and his work in this kind more seriously. His wide knowledge of strange lore and of many lands must enable him to conceive crowds of perfectly new situations [...]; this is better than popular treatise on the domestic snail, and the evolutions of the black beetle. Many men can write these, better or worse. Only one could write "John Creedy"'(492)
Tents of Shem
Academy, 3 August 1889, 67.
Athenaeum, 6 July, 1889, 32-3.
Spectator, 27 July 1889.
New York Daily Tribune, 4 August 1889, 10, col.2.
Tidal Thames
Spectator, 18 August 1894
This Mortal Coil
New York Daily Tribune, 6 January 1889, 12, col.4. See also 4 August 1889, 10, col.2.
Academy, 34 (20 Oct 1888), 253. Judges Hugh Massinger the scoundrel man of letters would never have imposed on a noble fellow like Warren Relf. And his deception is insanely purposeless; there is nothing to connect him with Elsie’s suicide, yet he deliberately concocts evidence which will probably work his ruin.
Athenaeum, 3 Nov 1888, 588.
Type-writer Girl
Athenaeum, 11 September 1897.
Woman, 13 October 1897, 8-9. By Arnold Bennett, signed ‘Barbara’.
Twelve Tales
Athenaeum, 25 November 1899, 720.
Bookman (December 1899)
Spectator, 2 December 1899.
Outlook, 43 (1899), 450.
Under Sealed Orders
Academy, 6 April 1895, 293
Athenaeum, 6 April 1895
Bookman, 8 (Apr 1895), 25.
Spectator, 27 April 1895
Venice
The Times, 21 November 1898
Dial, 52 (Jan/June 1912), 438.
Vignettes from Nature
Athenaeum, 11 Mar 1882, 319.
Wednesday the Tenth
New York Daily Tribune, 3 November 1890, 8, col.1.
Dial, 11 (1890/1), 251.
The Week, 7:49 (Nov 1889), 720.
What’s Bred in the Bone
Athenaeum, 4 July 1891, 35-6.
Nation, 23 July 1891
New England Magazine (November 1891)
New York Daily Tribune, 28 June 1891, 14, col.3.
Academy, 40 (1891), 72.
The Week, 5 (Jan 1892), 74.
Literary News, July 1891, 214.
White Man’s Foot
Athenaeum, 17 Nov 1888, 660-2.
White’s Selborne edited by Grant Allen, smaller ed.
Dial, 31 (16 December 1901), 372.
The Woman Who Did [short reviews in chronological order[
[Frederic, Harold.] New York Times, 3 Feb 1895. ‘Some stress is being laid on the announcement of Grant Allen's new novel, "The Woman Who Did." It is to be published next week here and in America, accompanied by hints that it is a replica of a book which he described himself two years ago as having been destroyed in manuscript because it was too good for the fool publishers and the idiotic public. Since then popular taste in fiction has taken a decided turn, and things which were risky in 1892 seem tame nowadays. Grant Allen is a man of much force in writing ability, whose novels heretofore have been confessedly potboilers written to sell and unworthy of his other work. This time, his friends say, he has given himself free hand and defied conventions in an effort to produce a story in which he can take pride. We shall see.’
[Arnold Bennet], Woman, 13 Feb 1895, 7. Signed ‘Barbara’.
[Harold Frederic]. New York Times, 17 Feb 1895. ‘Grant Allen's long-vaunted sensation, "The Woman Who Did," has fallen extremely flat. Why this man, who writes so charmingly in so many other departments of letters, should lose all sense of form, notion of humor and freshness of spirit the moment he attempts to construct a novel is very puzzling. The motif of this new work is brash enough to give it a place on the most advanced shelf of new-woman literature, but its treatment is lifeless to the point of tedium, and its characters, sinners and virtuous snobs alike, are all impossible puppets, who never convince, much less amuse, but simply bore one. It is too bad, but it is hopelessly true.'
[H.G. Wells]. ‘An Unemancipated Novelist,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 20 February 1895, 4. Says that the preface gives the idea that all his work so far has been ‘so much pandering to the gross Saxons’. Now, at last, ‘is his inevitable heart upon his sleeve for the critic to peck at’. The true pathos of the book is that GA’s potboilers have infected his style and sensibility, has left ‘a thousand grooves and turns in his mind’. This book, supposed to be so new; ‘he would have it Jekyll, his nobler part, and alas! after a convulsive struggle, old habit triumphs, and we are given the too familiar Hyde once more’, for all the talk of ‘taste and conscience’. Homes in on the absurdity that while Herminia has scruples about being termed ‘Mrs’, we are required to believe that she has kept her daughter in total ignorance ‘in order that Mr Grant Allen’s cheap climax’ may be attained. So, ‘after some years of earnest anticipation’ he has produced only ‘a Novelette with a Purpose’ although his sincerity is undeniable and his views on marriage ‘noble and eloquent’.
‘Mr Grant Allen as Balaam,’ Westminster Review, 5 (21 Feb 1895), 3. This review does put a shrewd finger on the issue GA skirts: ‘the great experiment is abruptly ended. So far it has been in no respect different from an ordinary marriage, and the really interesting point about it—which is, surely, what would have happened if either had grown tired of each other or conceived any affection for a third person—we are not permitted to see’.
T. de Wyzewa, Le Temps, 23 Feb 1895.
‘Grant Allen's Unfortunate Tale,’ New York Times, 24 Feb 1895. ‘[Grant Allen] has neither distinction as to style, not has he the inventive faculty. He has one tendency which he may pride himself on, and that is a straining to be vulgarly sensational. He has sought notoriety as a manufacturer of pot boilers, where the soup was watery, and the flavoring given the mess was given by means of hot spicing. The curious thing about Grant Allen is that he can write clever scientific articles, and people do read these and like them. Why, then, does he not stick to the telling of the many variations of the cactus or man's approach to the anthropoid ape or the marsupial sequence, or about bugs and such nice natural history topics, and leave nasty fiction severely alone?
Mr. Grant Allen has not the ability to make the conclusion of his story even pathetic. Herminia was a silly person, and Dolly a brute. The question arises, What does the author mean? Is not Herminia a slave to her passions, or does Mr. Grant Allen favor the idea of the promiscuous union of the sexes? Take it as you may, "The Woman Who Did" is not nice, no matter whether written for the good or the bad.’
Athenaeum, 105 (2 Mar 1895), 277.
Bookman, 7 (Mar 1895), 184. The reviewer makes the usual complaint that Herminia is a figure-head and, for 22, has an implausibly worked out philosophy of a middle-aged woman of the world. Also that no test of the union is provided, neither its permanence nor experiences, since the hero is killed off after a year. ‘an entirely unconvincing but honest book’.
[H.G. Wells], Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, 79 (9 March 1895), 319-320. A swingeing attack on TWWD which did not however destroy friendly relations between the two. He has great fun with the physical description of Herminia: she wears a ‘sleeveless sack embroidered with arabesques’. ‘The reader musts figure her sackful of lissom opulence and her dimpled, statuesque features for himself—the picture eludes us’(319). Objects to plan: ‘His proposal is to abolish cohabitation, to abolish the family—that school of all human gentleness—and to provide support for women who may have children at the expense of the State. We are to be all foundlings together, and it will be an inquisitive child who knows its own father . . . The women, who would inevitably have numerous children under the conditions he hopes for, would be the hysterically erotic, the sexually incontinent’ 320. ‘The whole book is of such texture. It is strenuous without strength, florid without beauty, subtly meant and coarsely done. Yet, withal, though it falls so short in execution and in art, there is something about it – that perfervid Keltic touch perhaps – that makes in readable. It warms one at times where better work might leave one cold. It may not merit praise, but it merits reading’ 320.
Spectator, 74 (30 Mar 1895), 431-2.
‘Grant Allen's Assault upon Marriage,’ Literary Digest, 10:26 (27 April 1895), 757-758. Mentions that it was “not permitted to be sold on the news-stands of Ireland”. Mostly a long synopsis. Mentions Stead’s review and quotes briefly from others.
‘Outraging One’s Friends,’ Week (25 Jul 1895), 825.