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GRANT ALLEN
Novelist and Miscellaneous Writer
Born Alwington, Kingston, Ontario 24 Feb 1848
- Died Hindhead, Surrey 25 Oct 1899
An
Annotated Bibliography of Contemporary Reviews
Last revised: 4 January 2007
This is a 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.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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’. 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.
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 his 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Books and Literary Topics. Grant Allen’s New Novel Hilda Wade. New
York Times, 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.
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.
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
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 (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.
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.
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
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.
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, 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.