"Reviewer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was one of the worst-printed books your reviewer has ever seen, yet with diligence the story has been extracted from it and is here presented. The doctor had for some years been obsessed with an idea that he could make an elixir of eternal life, and at ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... reviewer, triumphantly. Nay, the saints be good to us, what has Mrs Meynell in common with the "Englishwoman's" language, style, or most unconvincing passion? Men can write as from a woman's heart when they are minded to do so in desperate earnestness—there is Clarissa Harlowe and ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... to the surprising reputation of Tennyson. There was a time when the first series of Poems and Ballads was read for what seemed startling in its subject-matter; but that time has long since passed, and it is not probable that any reviewer of the new edition now reprinted verbatim from the edition of 1866 will so much as allude to the timid shrieks which went up from the reviewers of that year, except perhaps as one of the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... retaliation, however just, upon so obdurate and rapacious an enemy—but as an indispensable condition of her own safety and existence." The letters were reviewed under the heading of "Illustrations of Vetus," in the Morning Chronicle, December 2, 10, 16, 18; 1813. The reviewer and Byron did not take the patriotic view of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... 'Jasmin a Londres,' being a translation of certain notices of himself which had appeared in a leading English literary journal the Athenaeum.... I enjoyed his surprise, while I informed him that I knew who was the reviewer and translator; and explained the reason for the verses giving pleasure in an English dress, to the superior simplicity of the English language over modern French, for which he had a great contempt, as unfitted for lyrical composition.{4} He inquired of me respecting Burns, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Boileau, Before him the art of criticism had hardly existed. Authors had received indiscriminate praise or blame, usually founded upon interested motives or personal bias; but there had been little comparison with an acknowledged standard. This "slashing reviewer in verse," as Saintsbury calls him, was a severe pedagogue, but his public did learn their lesson. He made mistakes, was neither broad-minded nor profound in attainments, was occasionally unjust; but he showed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Copyright renewed 1946 by Thornton W. Burgess All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Republished in 1987 Printed and ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... a curious comfort from the story of the reviewer for a Boston journal who once described a musician as remaining seated through a concert in the pensive attitude of Buddha contemplating his navel. It is a story within whose implications lies all that has ever been said, or ever will be said, about censorship. The copy-readers and make-up ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... assertively pompous and dictatorial journals of the day, echoing the eulogies of the Parthenon, declaring 'this dead poet' worthy 'to rank with the highest of the Immortals,' and a number of other similar grandiose declarations. One reviewer took an infinite deal of pains to prove 'that if the genius of Theos Alwyn had only been spared to England, he must have infallibly been elected Poet Laureate as soon as the post became vacant, and that too, without a single ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Lie," as a separate piece, was attributed to him at an early period. Payne Collier, as I have said, prints it as his, from a manuscript "of the time"; and in an elaborate article on Raleigh, in the North British Review, copied into Littell's Living Age, of June 9, 1855, the able reviewer refers particularly to "The Lie," "saddest of poems," as Sir Walter's, and adds in a note that "it is to be found in a manuscript of 1596." This would make the piece two hundred and seventy years old. When and by whom it was first taken from Sir Walter and given to Sylvester, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... has kept your reviewer awake when he reasonably expected to be otherwise engaged. We do not remember coming across a more fascinating volume, even to a somewhat blase reader whose business it is to read all that comes in his way. The marvels, miracles they should be called, of the modern workshop are here exploited ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review in ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... recent studies in the Legend will make my meaning clear. A reviewer of my small Quest of the Holy Grail volume remarked that I appeared to be ignorant of Miss Peebles's study The Legend of Longinus "which materially strengthens the evidence for the Christian origin."[2] Now this is precisely what, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... that it is no longer the fashion to refer to persons or things as being "simon-pure"; the fashion, as he says, passed out some years ago when a writer in a German paper "was led into an amusing blunder by an English review. The reviewer, having occasion to draw a distinction between George and Robert Cruikshank, spoke of the former as the real Simon Pure. The German, not understanding the allusion, gravely told his readers that George Cruikshank was a pseudonym, the author's real name being ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... manner, giving it twice as good a chance of life as that of the other individuals, yet the chances would be strongly against its survival. Supposing it to survive and to breed, and that half its young inherited the favourable variation; still, as the Reviewer goes onto show, the young would have only a slightly better chance of surviving and breeding; and this chance would go on decreasing in the succeeding generations. The justice of these remarks cannot, I think, be disputed. If, for instance, a bird ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... blow up Parliament, by mining through to its lowest floor, or basement, from an adjacent house. This plot was hatched by a number of Catholic gentlemen, and was quite ingenious. These people came from a wide area of England, and numbered about thirty. One point of interest to your reviewer is that one of the places where they met, or retreated to when not personally involved in mining, was a house called White Webbs, just on what is now the northern limit of London. This house is now in use as a very nice and popular restaurant, well ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... and a man of most refined taste and clear intellect. This humorous and clever production was printed in a former edition of these Reminiscences, and in a very flattering notice of the book which appeared in the North British Review, the reviewer—himself, as is well known, a distinguished member of the Scottish judicial bench—remarks: "We are glad that the whole of the 'Diamond Beetle' by Cranstoun has been given; for nothing can be more graphic, spirited, and ludicrous, than the characteristic ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... Fitzjames STEPHEN (1829-1894), distinguished judge; in earlier life journalist, essayist, and reviewer; then Legal Member of the Council of the Governor-General of India; author of ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... either waste your time or mislead you. If you want to understand any subject whatever, read the best book upon it you can hear of; not a review of the book. If you don't like the first book you try, seek for another; but do not hope ever to understand the subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and awe; it may contain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and it always leads you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the door was thrown open. "Ah yes, here's your reviewer!" Drayton Deane was there with his long legs and his tall forehead: he had come to see what she thought of "The Right of Way," and to bring news which was singularly relevant. The evening papers were just out with a telegram on the ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... not object to criticism; and we do not expect that the critic will read the book before writing a notice of it: We do not even expect the reviewer of the book will say that he has not read it. No, we have no anticipations of anything unusual in this age of criticism. But if the Jupiter, Who passes his opinion on the novel, ever happens to peruse it in some weary moment of his ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... says, "has acquired an undeserved renown through Wallenstein's famous vow, 'to have it, though it were hung from heaven by chains.' This puts me in mind of the trick of a reviewer who, by enormous and exaggerated praise, induces us to read the stupid literary production of some dear friend of his own. We take up the book with great expectations, and find it—trash. It is easy to see ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... tongue strikes deeper than the lance;" and Ce qui vient du tambour s'en retourne a la flute; "What comes by the tabor goes back with the pipe." Point d'argent point de Suisse has become proverbial, observes an Edinburgh Reviewer; a striking expression, which, while French or Austrian gold predominated, was justly used to characterise the illiberal and selfish policy of the cantonal and federal governments of Switzerland, when it began to degenerate ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... imported; but it is quite a mistake to suppose it so in regard to this country, in which there are now found ten persons for every one ever imported, and all advancing by gradual steps toward civilization and freedom; and yet were the reviewer discoursing of the conduct of the Spanish settlers of Hispaniola, he could scarcely speak more disparagingly of them than he does in regard to a people that alone has so treated the negro race as to enable it to increase in numbers, and improve in its physical, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... suspect that they have been contrasting him with the Harbottles of the literary world, the gushers and the pushers and the slushers. After a month of these a fastidious writer may well infatuate a reviewer. For myself, who have not had to wade through Harbottles, I remain unstirred by Old Mole. Not a single character, male or female, moved me to the least interest; they were all cold, dead people, and Mr. CANNAN ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... himself, but devoted his attention to our criticisms. He would not allow harshness or abruptness in what we said. "We don't want your conclusions or your impressions—we want your reasons." Or he would say: "That is a fair criticism, but unsympathetic. It is in the spirit of a reviewer who wants to smash a man. We don't want Stephen to be stoned here, we want him confuted." I remember once how he said with indignation: "That is simply throwing a rotten egg! And its maturity shows that it was kept for that purpose! ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... some of the greatest minds of the country during the distraction and alarm of the French Revolution. Coleridge conducted a newspaper; Sir James Mackintosh wrote for one; Canning contributed to the Anti-Jacobin; Robert Hall of Leicester became a reviewer; Southey, Jeffrey, Brougham, Scott, Giffard, all men in the first rank, appeared in the character of contributors ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... lean soul, snapping greedily at every scrap which falls in his way, and, in default, snapping at everybody and everything else. And little comfort it gives him. Why should it? What comfort, save in being wise and strong? And is he the wiser or stronger for being told by a reviewer that he has written fine words, or has failed in writing them; or to have silly women writing to ask for his autograph, or for leave to set his songs to music? Nay,—shocking as the question may seem,—is he the wiser and stronger man for being ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... [6] A reviewer in the Literary Gazette observes that, in these lines, Mr. Coleridge has misapprehended the meaning of the word "Zug," a team, translating it as "Anzug," a suit of clothes. The following version, as a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... is not objected to as depicting a degree of human felicity and moral development necessarily unattainable by the race, provided time enough had been allowed for its evolution from the present chaotic state of society. In failing to allow this, the reviewer thinks that the author has made an absurd mistake, which seriously detracts from the value of the book as a work of realistic imagination. Instead of placing the realization of the ideal social state a scant fifty years ahead, it is suggested that he should have made his figure seventy-five centuries. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... ranging from Bacon to Carlyle. He began lazily to turn the pages, smiling to himself the while at the paradoxes of life. Here, for an hour, he sat under the limes, drunk with summer breezes and scents, toying with a book, as though he were some "indolent irresponsible reviewer"—some college fellow in vacation—some wooer of an idle muse. Yet dusk that evening would find him once more in the Babel of London. And before him lay the most strenuous, and, as he hoped, the most fruitful passage of his political ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... believe, was heartily delighted when, some months after Dennis's attack, a notice of his Essay upon Criticism appeared in the Spectator, December 20, 1711. The reviewer censured some attacks upon contemporaries—a reference obviously to the lines upon Dennis—which the author had admitted into his "very fine poem;" but there were compliments enough to overbalance this slight reproof. Pope wrote a letter of acknowledgment to Steele, overflowing with the sincerest ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... than that no house, short of a palace, would have held them all. And, in the palmy days of circulating libraries, the price given by second-hand booksellers for novels made a very considerable addition to the reviewer's remuneration or guerdon. But these booksellers would not pay, in proportion, for two or one volume books—alleging, what no doubt was true, that the libraries had a lower tariff for them. Further, the short story, now so popular, was ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Critic contains some quip or satire at the expense of James Kirke Paulding, and his "Backwoodsman" is particularly levelled at. Paulding is dubbed "The Cabbage Bard," and the caustic reviewer proceeds to write: "We had a Dennie and a Clifton, yet the classical elegance of the one has not availed to preserve his countrymen from being intoxicated by the quaintness and affectation of the Salmagundi school, and the purity and wit of the other have as little proved powerful to save his ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... The reviewer sets forth the principal results of HERSCHEL'S observations, and, after quoting his definition of the new term asteroid, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... Or the supposed reviewer of our national history may find, somewhere in his retrospect, that a certain brook or swamp in a wilderness, or a stripe of waste, or the settlement of boundaries in respect to some insignificant traffic, was difficult of adjustment between jealous, irritated, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... a reviewer, et proeterea nihil. Some twenty years ago he wrote two or three novels, but people wouldn't look at them, and so he became morose about the public taste and modern literature. In fact, there has been no English literature—for twenty years; this ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... author of it has read "Liza of Lambeth," and said Faugh! The article, peculiarly inept, is one of those outpourings which every generation of artists has to suffer with what tranquillity it can. According to the Reviewer, ugliness is specially rife "just now." It is always "just now." It was "just now" when George Eliot wrote "Adam Bede," when George Moore wrote "A Mummer's Wife," when Thomas Hardy wrote "Jude the Obscure." As sure as ever ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... gives them something to write about. A disquisition upon the mantle of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and an analysis of the differences and similarities between him and his successor, generally fill so much of a notice as to enable the reviewer to dismiss the book itself very briefly. I often used to wish, when, years afterwards, I was myself a reviewer for the London Spectator, that I could light upon some son of his father who might similarly lighten my labors. Meanwhile, I was agreeably ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... of this renowned hero's adventures? The Conversations-Lexicon (art. Muenchausen) states that the stories are to be found under the title of "Mendacia Ridicula," in vol. iii. of Deliciae Academicae, by J.P. Lange (Heilbronn, 1665); and that "at a later period they appeared in England, where a reviewer supposed them to be a satire on the ministry." I remember to have read when a boy (I think in The Percy Anecdotes), that the book was written by an Englishman who was styled "M——," and was described as having been long ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... could as little attach to a house in Oxford-street as they could to a house in any other quarter of London. Meantime, I had sufficiently indicated that, whatsoever street was concerned in that affair, Oxford-street was not; and it is remarkable enough, as illustrating this amiable reviewer's veracity, that no one street in London was absolutely excluded but one; and that one, Oxford-street. For I happened to mention that, on such a day (my birth-day), I had turned aside from Oxford-street to look at the house in question. I will ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... as a writer of books about the French Renaissance, on which she became an acknowledged authority. She was less well known, but not less effective, as a reviewer—no one ever dissected Charlotte Yonge so justly—and she excelled in personal description. Her accounts of her friends Miss Emily Lawless, Miss Mary Coleridge, and Joseph Joachim, are masterpieces of characterization. All her literary work was based on a wide ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... handling of the face-to-face element. Only by admitting this aesthetic moment of arrest can we allow dramatic value to such a play as "Les Affaires sont les Affaires"—a truly static drama. The hero of this is, in the words of a reviewer, "essentially the same force in magnitude and direction from the rise to the fall of the curtain. It does not move; it is we who are taken around it so that we may see its various facets. It is not moulded by the successive incidents of the play, but ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... rigid compliance with the laws of parentage. The intermarriage of those related by blood is no uncommon cause of mental deterioration. Dr. Ray thinks that the facts collected in France and America upon this point are much more conclusive than a recent Westminster reviewer will allow. We are told that in this country the mingling of common blood in marriage is more frequent than is generally supposed, and that, of all agencies which have to do with the prevalence of insanity and idiocy, this is probably the most potent. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... authors were much in the habit of publishing at their own expense. All the poetry which I reviewed appeared to be published at the expense of the authors. If I am asked how I comported myself, under all circumstances, as a reviewer—I answer,—I did not forget that I was connected with a Review established on Oxford principles, the editor of which had translated Quintilian. All the publications which fell under my notice I treated in a gentlemanly ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... politics Mrs. Browning was prepared, as the foregoing letters show; but one incident caused her real and quite unexpected annoyance. The reviewer in the 'Athenaeum' (apparently Mr. Chorley) by some unaccountable oversight took the 'Curse for a Nation' to apply to England, instead of being (as it obviously is) a denunciation of American slavery. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... been reading with much interest the article on Queen Anne in the 'Edinburgh,' and I hope you will allow me to express to you how much I am gratified at the favourable view which it takes of my performance. The reviewer and I, as I am glad to find, often agree in our views of men and things; and whenever we differ, our difference is expressed in terms that cannot but give great pleasure ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... a Gypsy student. He collected data which can be verified, but do not often give an impression of life, except the life of a young Cambridge man who is devoted to Gypsies. The "Athenaeum" reviewer {221b} begs the question by calling the Gypsy dialogues of Hindes Groome, photographic; and is plainly inaccurate in saying that if they are compared with those in "Lavengro" "the illusion in Borrow's narrative is disturbed by ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... other reviews equally enthusiastic or nearly so. Many papers failed to do more than include it in the List of Books Received. The Times Literary Supplement gave six lines of small type to a cold account of it. The reviewer declared that "this first novel is not without merit" but either had not been able to discover the merit or had not enough space in which to describe it, for he omitted to say what it was. John had paid a visit to the local lending ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... medical journal which displayed my name among others on the cover had published a ruinous review of a book by my friend F—— of Berlin, from the pen of a very juvenile reviewer. I communicated with the editor, who, indeed, expressed his regret, but would not promise any redress. Thereupon I broke off my connection with the paper; in my letter of resignation I expressed the hope that our personal relations ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... the statement that in those early years in Hollis Street Church "Starr King was not thought to be what a teacher of Boston Unitarianism ought to be. He was regarded rather as a florid platform speaker, one interested in the crude and restless attempts at reform which sober men distrusted." Another reviewer mingles praise and criticism quite ingeniously. "He astonishes and charms his hearers by a rare mastery over sentences. He is a skilful word-marshal. Hence his popularity as a lyceum lecturer. However much of elegant leisure the more solid and instructive ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and does not seem to contemplate the possibility of there being any fighting on Southern soil. But his numbers—I think he made each of the opposing forces number some one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand men; and a sharp reviewer broke out into a loud guffaw over the impossibility that any such number of men could ever be arrayed against each other, on the soil of the United States, by any possible convulsion. Only a few years have ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... of the King is a masterpiece; there is a picturesqueness, a sincerity which will catch all readers in an agreeable storm of emotion, and even leave a hardened reviewer impressed and delighted."—Literature, London. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... use of hoping for a decadence of the craze for historical romances so long as the public is fed on books like this? Such a story has zest for the most jaded palate; nay, it can hold the interest even of a book reviewer. From the first page to the last there is not a moment when one's desire to finish the book weakens. Along with the ordinary interest of curiosity there goes that of a delightful and unique love story involving no little ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... immediately flocks to your doors to inquire after your pure hand, or your pure foot.' 'Their temper,' he observed, 'stands anything but an attack on their climate; even Jeffrey cannot shake off the illusion that myrtles flourish at Craig Crook.' The sharp reviewer stuck to his myrtle allusions, and treated Smith's attempts with as much contempt as if he had been a 'wild visionary, who had never breathed his caller air,' nor suffered under the rigours of his climate, nor spent five years ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... equal, single-handed, to the superintendence of such dishes as we had to set before Herr Grosse. It was high time I relieved Zillah if we were to pass successfully through the ordeal of the great surgeon's criticism, as reviewer of all the sauces. ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... trustees to the [140] State, the obligatory State-examination for schools, the obligatory State-examination for schoolmasters, and the foundation of the great State University of Berlin,—take their origin. This his English reviewer says not a word of. But, writing for a people whose dangers lie, as we have seen, on the side of their unchecked and unguided individual action, whose dangers none of them lie on the side of an over-reliance on the State, he quotes just so much of Wilhelm von Humboldt's example as ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... highest order. 'The author,' writes one, 'is a scientifically trained critic. He has learned to argue and to weigh evidence.' 'The book,' adds a second, 'proceeds from a man of ability, a scholar and a reasoner.' 'His scholarship,' says this same reviewer again, 'is apparent throughout.' 'Along with a wide and minute scholarship,' he writes in yet another place, 'the unknown writer shows great acuteness.' Again a third reviewer, of whose general tone, as well as of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... trouble of hunting them up and copying them out; also, they are afraid that if they search them out and print them they will be scoffed at by the book-reviewers for retelling those worn old things which are familiar to everybody. They should not mind the reviewer's jeer; he doesn't remember any of the worn old things until the book which he is reviewing has retold ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... few of us read Crabbe to-day. He has an acknowledged place in the history of literature, but there pretty well even well-read people are content to leave him. "What have our literary critics been about that they have suffered such a writer to drop into neglect and oblivion?" asks a recent Quarterly Reviewer. He does not live as Cowper does by a few lyrics and ballads and by incomparable letters. Scarcely a line of Crabbe survives in current conversation. If you turn to one of those handy volumes of reference—Dictionaries of ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... read, the first volume, which is all that is yet published, treats of the development of the township, hundred, and shire; the second volume, we suppose, being designed to treat of the State Constitutions. The reviewer forgets that there is such a subject as the "development of the city and local magistracies" (which is to be the subject of that second volume), and lets us see that in his apprehension the American state is an institution of the same order as the town and county. We can thus readily assent ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... Reviewer—you censor morum, you who pique yourself (and justly and honorably in the main) upon your character of gentleman, as well as of writer, suppose, not that you yourself invent and indite absurd twaddle about gentlemen's private meetings and transactions, but pick this wretched garbage out ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... companion. The reviewer has enjoyed it in a month when books to be read have been ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... out and to condemn inaccuracies and errors without bringing upon the record every individual name. No misunderstanding could possibly exist, since the references were ample in every case. But since this reticence, in at least one instance, has been criticized by an unfriendly reviewer, it is perhaps better to state that the repeated allusions to Lord Lister's journeyings to France, and the article in Harper's Monthly for April, 1909, were from the pen of the author of Animal Experimentation—a work which is reviewed in the Appendix ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... liable to go out and to go wrong at inconvenient moments, and with incendiary possibilities. These are the faults of my qualities; and I assure you that I sometimes dislike myself so much that when some irritable reviewer chances at that moment to pitch into me with zest, I feel unspeakably relieved and obliged. But I never dream of reforming, knowing that I must take myself as I am and get what work I can out of myself. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... artistic brotherhood upon our journal, and as some of these men were personal friends of the principal stockholders in the paper, his destructive ardor was checked by an imperative order from the authorities, from whose will there is no appeal. As a book-reviewer he labored under similar disadvantages; he stoutly maintained that the reading of a volume would necessarily and unduly bias the critic's judgment, and that a man endowed with a keen, literary nose could form an intelligent opinion, after a careful ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... place now to her masculine grip. She eulogised me in the language of a seasoned reviewer on the staff of a long-established journal—wordy perhaps, but sound. I revered and loved her. I wished I could give her my undivided attention. But, whilst I sat there, teacup, in hand, between her and the Duchess, part ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... into print came about through my good friend, Mr. Hurd, the book reviewer of the Transcript. For him I began to write an occasional critical article or poem just to try my hand. One of my regular "beats" was up the three long flights of stairs which led to Hurd's little den above Washington Street, for there I felt myself a little more of the literary man, a little ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... began to write it, at Mirfield. He says that a book of stories of my own, The Hill of Trouble, put the idea into his head—but his stories have no resemblance to mine. Mine were archaic little romances, written in a style which a not unfriendly reviewer called "painfully kind," an epigram which always gave Hugh extreme amusement. His were modern, semi-mystical tales; he says that he personally came to dislike the book intensely from the spiritual point of view, as being feverish and ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... continued the reviewer, 'whose style is for the most part easy and dignified, with a praiseworthy absence of all inflation or bombast, seems at times to have been smitten by a fatal desire to "split the ears of the groundlings" and produce an impression by showy parades of a not overwhelmingly profound scholarship; and ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... a captive, and addressed by the vulgar with the language they seem to find most appropriate to such occasions,—that of thrusts and blows. Silently, his head averted, he ignored their existence, as Plotinus or Sophocles might that of a modern reviewer. Probably he listened to the voice of the cataract, and felt that congenial powers flowed free, and was consoled, though his own ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... common with that which cannot tolerate the hardy details of a prize-fight, but which luxuriates on descriptions of the murder dens of modern England. But prize-fighters and pugilists are blackguards, a reviewer has said; and blackguards they would be provided they employed their skill and their prowess for purposes of brutality and oppression; but prize-fighters and pugilists are seldom friends to brutality ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... A reviewer of "The Sidneys of Penshurst," by Philip Sidney, says there is a tradition that the Black Prince and his Fair Maid of Kent once spent their Christmastide at Penshurst, whose banqueting hall, one of the finest ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... attracted by excellences of form and rhythm apart from content, he sometimes, when feeling outran his artistic speed, perpetrated sonnets in the loosely rhymed Elizabethan fashion, which every right-minded reviewer said he ought not to ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... ten or twelve guineas for each of them at a public book-sale? But—let them be faithfully reprinted, and even a golden guinea (if such a coin be now in the pocket of a poor bibliomaniac like myself) would be considered by me as dear terms upon which to purchase the original edition! The reviewer has illustrated his position by a model of the Pigot diamond; and intimates that this model does not "lessen the public desire to possess the original." Lord Mansfield once observed that nothing more frequently ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that these early speculators not only made this their aim, but were quite satisfied with their success in it; not only sought for causes which should carry in their mere statement evidence of their efficiency, but fully believed that they had found such causes. The reviewer can see plainly that this was an error, because he does not believe that there exist any relations between material phenomena which can account for their producing one another; but the very fact of the persistency ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... has disposed of his second importation, and has sent to Ridge for a third—at least so he says. In every bookseller's window I see my own name, and say nothing, but enjoy my fame in secret. My last reviewer kindly requests me to alter my determination of writing no more; and 'A Friend to the Cause of Literature' begs I will gratify the public with some new work 'at no very distant period.' Who would not be a bard?—that is to say, if all critics would be so polite. However, the others will pay ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... that is not unworthy of notice in the new system is its tendency to narrow the openings for the writer by profession. If an article is to be signed, the editor will naturally seek the name of an expert of special weight and competence on the matter in hand. A reviewer on the staff of a famous journal once received for his week's task, General Hamley on the Art of War, a three-volume novel, a work on dainty dishes, and a translation of Pindar. This was perhaps taxing versatility and omniscience over-much, and it may be taken for granted ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... others to fail, by giving a bad idea of their works. You will, of course, never read the books you review, and you will be exhaustively ignorant of the subjects which they treat. But you can always find fault with the title of the story which comes into your hands, a stupid reviewer never fails to do this. You can also copy out as much of the preface as will fill your eighth of a column, and add, that the performance is not equal to the promise. You must never feel nor shew the faintest interest in the work reviewed, that would be fatal. ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... have studied Westminster, Episcopal, and Catholic catechisms, the teachings in all three of which are that faith in Christ and sorrow for and renunciation of sin alone can open the gates of heaven. We regard it as the duty of a conscientious reviewer to point out an erroneous statement wherever it occurs, whether in regard to the faith of Protestants, Catholics, Hebrews, Mohammedans, Fire Worshippers, or any other classes of men whatsoever. Misstatement has caused an immense deal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... induce the reader to reflect on what is implied by patient repetition or perseverance, and what an incredible and varied power that man acquires who masters it. He who can lead himself, or others, into a habit can do anything. Even Religion is, in fact, nothing else. "Religion," said the reviewer of "The Evolution of the Idea of God," by GRANT ALLEN, "he defines as Custom or Practice—not theory, not theology, not ethics, not spiritual aspirations, but a certain set of more or less similar observances: propitiation, prayer, praise, offerings, the request for Divine favors, ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... that faction which seems to think, that to subvert the constitution, the shortest and most effectual method is by beginning with the Established Church; but will any person of veracity, any person of ordinary decency, say that he has deserved the accusation which the Edinburgh reviewer, with a want of decency peculiarly his ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... who write book reviews for the newspapers. Here we have a heavy pretension to culture, a campus cocksureness, a laborious righteousness—but of sound aesthetic understanding, of alertness and hospitality to ideas, not a trace. The normal American book reviewer, indeed, is an elderly virgin, a superstitious bluestocking, an apostle of Vassar Kultur; and her customary attitude of mind is one of fascinated horror. (The Hamilton Wright Mabie complex! The "white list" of novels!) William Dean Howells, despite a certain jauntiness and ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... romances. The defects which both point out are, I presume, but too completely explained by the preceding statement of the rapidity with which this, the last of those great performances, had been thrown off; nor do I see that either Reviewer has failed to do sufficient justice to the beauties which redeem the imperfections of The Lord of the Isles—except as regards the whole character of Bruce, its real hero, and the picture of the battle ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... in his dreams he saw a hundred highly-educated men, who had given their lives to the study of fiction, bending anxiously over the tome and seeking with conscientious care the precise phrases in which most accurately to express their expert appreciation of it. He dreamt much of the reviewer of the Daily Tribune, his favourite morning paper, whom he pictured as a man of forty-five or so, with gold-rimmed spectacles and an air of generous enthusiasm. He hoped great things from the article in the ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... detestable logic that much of Elmer's treatise on Eugenics was based on evidence that must be viewed with the gravest suspicion. Not that Grossmann had directly attacked that treatise; he had made no kind of reference to it in his own book; but his irrefutable statements had been quoted by every reviewer of "Eugenics" who chanced to have come across the English translation of "Heredity and Human Development," to the confounding of Elmer's somewhat too optimistic prophecies concerning the possibility of breeding a race that should approximate ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... most memorable services on the readers of English throughout the world. He stands between philosophic historians and the public very much as journals and periodicals stand between the masses and great libraries. Macaulay is a glorified journalist and reviewer, who brings the matured results of scholars to the man in the street in a form that he can remember and enjoy, when he could not make use of a merely learned book. He performs the office of the ballad-maker or story-teller in an age before ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... deficient in the decorum of his manners, and he complained that he was represented as a drunkard, merely because his name rhymed to Cabaret. Murphy, no doubt, felicitated himself in his literary quarrel with Dr. Franklin, the poet and critical reviewer, by adopting the singular rhyme of "envy rankling" to his rival's ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... black velvet, and my heroes with long swords were "scrapped." As one book reviewer put it, "To expect the public of to-day to read the novels of Fletcher Farrell is like asking people to give up the bunny hug and go back to ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... a review of a late American work, ma'am, and I insist that the author is skinned alive, whereas, Mr. John insists that the reviewer exposes only his own rage, the work having a national character, and running counter to the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Rickman would appear to-night in full evening dress, to rush away in the middle of the meal, a splendour the more glorious, being brief. She was waiting for the delightful moment when she would explain to the visitor that the gentleman who had just left the room was Mr. Rickman, "the reviewer and dramatic critic." She would say it, as she had said it many times before, with the easy accomplished smile of the hostess ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of a Quaker family, who fled from England to seek a new life in America in the late 1600s. It's a short book, and it makes a very good read, or of course a good audiobook. As reviewer I found ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... love story—one that justifies the publishing business, refreshes the heart of the reviewer, strengthens faith in the outcome of the great experiment of putting humanity on earth. The Rosary is a rare book, a source of ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... 8,* (* In his manuscript journal, which was used by the Quarterly reviewer of the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes, in August 1810, Flinders gave the date on which he met Le Geographe as April 9th (Quarterly Review volume 4 52). But there is no contradiction. In his journal Flinders gave the date of the nautical day, ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... sure that one or two may not after all have been omitted,) it will be seen that Heliodorus had a tolerably numerous progeny, even in his own language, to answer for; though we fear we must concur in the sweeping censure of a Quarterly Reviewer, (vol. x. p. 301,) who condemns then en masse, with the single exception of the "Ethiopics" of the last-named author, as "a few tiresome stories, absolutely void of taste, invention, or interest; without influence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... opinion of his literary friends beforehand." He was pleased, however, by the notice of "Ivanhoe," "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and "The Bride of Lammermoor" in the Edinburgh Review of 1820, as he showed by quoting part of its remarks. The Reviewer frankly observed "that, when we began with one of these works, we were conscious that we never knew how to leave off. The Porteous mob is rather heavily described, and the whole part of George Robertson, or Staunton, is extravagant and displeasing. The final catastrophe is needlessly ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... attempted to shoot, which in a kind spirit was heartily grasped; and the two principals in the duel, who, five minutes before, eagerly thirsted for each other's blood, rode off together sworn friends and brothers, and were afterwards as great cronies as the Irish Bard and the Scotch reviewer. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... January 1908, The Blue Lagoon was an immediate success, both with reviewers and the public. "[This] tale of the discovery of love, and innocent mating, is as fresh as the ozone that made them strong," declared one reviewer. Another claimed that "for once the title of 'romance,' found in so many modern stories, is really justified." The novel was reprinted more than twenty times in the next twelve years and remained popular in other forms for more ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... impression of the loveliness of nature,' contrasting it with 'the riches, rules, and prejudices of literature;' the latter being in allusion to a quarrel which the learned editor had just had with some learned fellow-editors. Next followed the 'New Monthly Magazine,' the reviewer of which informed a discerning public that 'Clare is strictly a descriptive poet, and his daily occupation in the fields has given him manifest advantages.' This profound remark made great impression, and was quoted by Messrs. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... part is only devotion to the imperial cause. According to Scartazzini, Beatrice is the symbol of the Papacy. Gietmann denies the historicity of Beatrice and declares that she typifies the Church. The argument for this theory expressed by a sympathetic reviewer of Gietmann's book, "Beatrice, Geist und Kern der Danteshen Dichtung," follows: "Beatrice is the soul and center of the poet's works, his inspiring genius, the ideal which moulds his life and character. If we consider her as a mere historical ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... to the time of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise the whole array of anti-slavery writers and speakers had not accomplished the results which the reviewer attributes ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... The reviewer of "Evolution Old and New" in the Saturday Review (March 31, 1879), of whom all I can venture to say is that he or she is a person whose name carries weight in matters connected with biology, though he (for brevity) was in the humour for seeing everything objectionable ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... "Your Monthly reviewer has made a mistake: Cavaliere, alone, is well enough; but 'Cavalier' servente' has always the e mute in conversation, and omitted in writing; so that it is not for the sake of metre; and pray let Griffiths know this, with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... that the first part only was from Kinglake's pen: having vindicated his friend's ability and good faith, her right to speak and to be heard attentively, he left the survey of her views, with which he probably disagreed, to the originally assigned reviewer. The article, Madame Novikoff tells us in the "Nouvelle Revue," was received avec une stupefaction unanime. It formed the general talk for many days, was attributed to Lord Salisbury, was supposed to have been inspired by Prince Gortschakoff. The name standing against it in Messrs. Murray's ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... Your reviewer, Sir, while admitting that the story in question is 'plainly the work of a man of letters,' the work of one who has 'brains, and art, and style,' yet suggests, and apparently in all seriousness, that I have written it in order that it ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... immorality, nor are churches emptied by criticism. At all events, taking the risk of consequences, we have entered on an era of almost complete literary impunity; the bonfire is as extinct as the pillory; the only fiery ordeal is that of criticism, and dread of the reviewer has taken the place of all fear of ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... duly grateful for this earliest public recognition of his genius as a poet. In the Athenaeum Allen Cunningham made an effort to be appreciative and sympathetic. John Stuart Mill desired to be the reviewer of Pauline in Taifs Magazine; there, however, the poem had been already dismissed with one contemptuous phrase. It found few readers, but the admiration of one of these, who discovered Pauline many years later, was a sufficient compensation for ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Edinburgh Review spoke of the book being "as admirable for the clearness of its descriptions, and the sweetness of its composition, as for the purity and gracefulness that pervade it." The impression made by such a testimony was the more marked, that the reviewer spoke of the writer as a fellow ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... sober, matter-of-fact observer who tells what he has seen with his own eyes, and exaggerates nothing. Dr. Holland, one of the editors of that magazine, sent to me a number of uncomplimentary criticisms of my article. One reviewer said: "This Langford must be the champion liar of the Northwest." Resting for a time under this imputation, I confess to a feeling of satisfaction in reading from a published letter, written later in the summer of 1871 ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... Title-pages.—Among the advertisements in the last Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews, is one which replies to certain criticisms on a work. One of these criticisms was a stricture upon its title. The author states that the reviewer had a presentation copy, and ought to have inquired into the title under which the book was sold to the public before he animaverted upon the connexion between the title and the work. It seems then ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... the title page. The volume was reviewed enthusiastically by Hallam, but was more or less slated by Christopher North in the columns of Blackwoods' Magazine. Tennyson was very angry about the latter review and replied to the reviewer in some caustic, but ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... mainly to the philosophical and theological objections which have been elaborately urged, almost exclusively by the American reviewers. The North British reviewer, indeed, roundly denounces the book as atheistical, but evidently deems the case too clear for argument. The Edinburgh reviewer, on the contrary, scouts all such objections—as well he may, since he ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... critical habit in reading has a practical bearing, inasmuch as it is a direct training for the positions of book-reviewer and manuscript reader for magazine and book publishers. Since women read more than men, the woman's view of a manuscript is often preferred by publishers. Therefore there are more women than men in the position of literary adviser. These are paid salaries ranging from ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... perfect simplicity of expression as, to many, may appear insipid and ridiculous." The six volumes of the third edition came out successively on the first day of the first six months of 1800. The Monthly Reviewer of the first edition, it may be added, was highly laudatory; and his commendations show that the early critics of the author were fully alive to her distinctive qualities, "The moral and prudential lessons of these ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... thought had been their portraiture, although we could not so far speak from personal evidence. But the reviewer gainsays all this, and even does more. After drawing a comparison, and not altogether a just one, between the "Sisters of Charity in France," and ladies of fortune who unostentatiously visit the sick poor in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... gilded cabin of his steam yacht Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer Dangers of delay. "Consider "Carefully the reviewer. ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... papers send a funny book to an old fossil of a reviewer with no sense of humour?" I said, testily and waited for the next post. Well, it came; it brought three adverse notices ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... life upon the globe,' which the reviewer says I 'cannot evade the admission of,' I distinctly deny. The affirmation of [216] universal evolution is in itself the negation of an absolute commencement of anything. Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn |
