Page:The Spoils of Poynton (London, William Heinemann, 1897).djvu/310



The Pall Mall Budget.—'For this week the only novel worth mentioning is Mrs. Steel's The Potter's Thumb. Her admirable From the Five Rivers, since it dealt with native Indian life, was naturally compared with Mr. Kipling's stories. In The Potter's Thumb the charm which came from the freshness of them still remains. Almost every character is convincing, and some of them excellent to a degree. '

The Globe.—'This is a brilliant story—a story that fascinates, tingling with life, steeped in sympathy with all that is best and saddest.'

The Manchester Guardian.—'The impression left upon one after reading The Potter's Thumb is that a new literary artist, of very great and unusual gifts, has arisen. . . . In short, Mrs. Steel must be congratulated upon having achieved a very genuine and amply deserved success.'

The Glasgow Herald.—'A clever story which, in many respects, brings India very near to its readers. The novel is certainly one interesting alike to the Anglo-Indian and to those untravelled travellers who make their only voyages in novelists' romantic company.'

The Scotsman.—'It is a capital story, full of variety and movement, which brings with great vividness before the reader one of the phases of Anglo-Indian life. Mrs. Steel writes forcibly and sympathetically, and much of the charm of the picture which she draws lies in the force with which she brings out the contrast between the Asiatic and European world. The Potter's Thumb is very good reading, with its mingling of the tragedy and comedy of life. Its evil woman par excellence. . . is a finished study.'

The Westminster Gazette.—'A very powerful and tragic story. Mrs. Steel gives us again, but with greater elaboration than before, one of those strong, vivid, and subtle pictures of Indian life which we have learnt to expect from her. To a reader who has not been in India her books seem to get deeper below the native crust, and to have more of the instinct for the Oriental than almost anything that has been written in this time.'

The Leeds Mercury.—'The Potter's Thumb is a powerful story of the mystical kind, and one which makes an instant appeal to the imagination of the reader. . . . There is an intensity of vision in this story which is as remarkable as it is rare, and the book, in its vivid and fascinating revelations of life, and some of its limitations, is at once brilliant and, in the deepest and therefore least demonstrative sense, impassioned.'

The National Observer.—'A romance of East and West, in which the glamour, intrigue, and superstition of India are cunningly interwoven and artfully contrasted with the bright and changeable aspects of modern European society. "Love stories," as Mr. Andrew Lang once observed, "are best done by women"; and Mrs. Steel's treatment of Rose Tweedie's love affair with Lewis Gordon is a brilliant instance in point. So sane and delightful an episode is rare in fiction now-a-days.'


 * WILLIAM HEINEMANN,, W.C.