"Those who take Mr. Walpole’s work as a plain story will find it of compelling interest. Those who read its message complete will be impressed by the sense of a great theme thoughtfully and powerfully presented. There is no flattery in the statement that this book is _one of the really great pieces of modern fiction_."--_New York World_.
"All the grim, unyielding pride of race of England’s old autocracy is made incarnate in the personality of one aged woman, the ever-dominating title-character in this admirable study of changing social orders. It is a heroic picture that the author paints of this grim old head of the house of Beaminster. She stands out supreme amid the pages, one of the most notable figures put into a book in a long time."--_Philadelphia Press_.
"Walpole has strengthened his claim to position by proving that he is not a man of one book, for _The Duchess of Wrexe_ is without doubt one of the big novels of the year. It is a novel of extreme significance."--_Samuel Abbott in The Boston Post_.
"If you love enough we are with you everywhere--forever"--that is the word of the little children that stupid people call "dead." Always here, playing in the room they loved. Such is the end of _The Golden Scarecrow_, the most original book by the author of _Fortitude_. It is the story of a dozen children living about a spacious old square, a square filled with leisure and the sound of leaves, in the heart of London. The son of a duke is one, and one the forlornly playing child of a housekeeper who drank and was untidy, but their lives were all bound together by the Friend--who is the Friend of Stevenson’s child-verses--who in dangerous or unhappy moments comes to children and with his great warm arm guides them.... There is a wonderful fancifulness in _The Golden Scarecrow_, a mellow and gentle beauty; and a really remarkable ability to enter into the children’s own world, where carpets are vast moors, and the fire whispers secrets, and the lashing out of a whip of wind suggests things vast and secret and perilous. Mr. Walpole has "loved enough"; has so loved children and the little land of the imagination that he has put into this book the quality which can never be quite plumbed--tenderness. And it is not the awkward tenderness of the person not born to write; but graceful and perfect and winning as a Greek vase.