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MRS. PEATTIE’S BOOK.
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What the Great Literary Critics Say About the “Mountain Woman.”

Mrs Peattie s stories about the wild semi-civilized life in the remoter parts of America are distinctly good Her characters, as is not infrequently the case in the better class of American novels of this description seem to have a finer and less conventional morality than that to which we are accustomed and her work is not spoilt by the roughness or exuberance of diction and thought too common among her countrywomen The sentiment of most of the stories is commonplace enough –it is generally that of a fine character rebelling against the meannesses of ordinary society life, and fulfilling a higher duty in wild surroundings, but the narrative is simple and direct, and the interest is well maintained.
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(New York Critic Aug 8th)

The science of leaving out, and leaving off when one is through seems to be as difficult for story writers to master as for the good old brethren who used to speak in “experience meetings’ Of the distinguished few have mastered this delicate art, and given us the short story in the quintessence of its perfection highest rank has been taken by Poe, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Stockton, “Adirondack” Murray, Mary Wilkins, Richard Harding Davis, Ian Maclaren and Bar[n?]ie, and now comes a woman from the land of wheat and prairie blossoms, who has shown herself worthy to be ranked with our very best short writers

Mrs Peattie s sketches are republished from several magazines and in this case we are thankful for the recollection

The first tale, which gives its name to the book, is realistic in a sense that would redeem that term from all its stigma were Mrs Peattie s methods but those of the trivial detailer of commonplaceness, who dignifies his platitudes by the name of realism There is fine local color in “A Mountain Woman” as in all these stories, and many a man or woman has duplicated the experiences of the heroine who could not live without the messages from the the mountains she has known from her birth The insight and the outsight displayed in the author s study of character in this book are marvelous Especially fine is the lifelike photographing of “The Three Johns’, which is a little gem alone worth the price of the book The author of the sketches is something more than clever She is rarely endowed with a fine, subtle sympathy that blends with all her thinking and announces her belief in the common kinship of all mankind The twin qualities of pathos and humor are in evidence from the first chapter to the last. When one adds to these characteristics a keen instinct for the ‘ inevitable phrase ‘ and a spicy originality one understands why and how Mrs Peattie succeeded in making a really notable addition to American literature
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(Edinboro Scotsman, June 20th.)

Most of the eight short stories that make up Mrs Peattie’s volume, ‘A Mountain Woman”, are reprinted from such American papers and magazines as Harper s Weekly’, ‘Lippincotts’, and the ‘Cosmopolitan” The first is the study of a character of a ranch-bred woman, who marries a fast town man and cannot take to a frivolous life She is like Ibsen s “Lady From the Sea ‘ In a way, but unlike that stranger to town life she is never acclimatized and ends by going back to the mountains Another tells a pathetic tale of how a small farmer has all the spirit and joy crushed out of his life by the capitalists Then there is a striking story of a man s returning from penal servitude of twenty years and finding his old love true to him. The other tales are not less happy in their subjects, and all are colored with soberness of feeling which has the pleasing effect of sad music The [talcs?] are scarcely distinctive enough to mark them obviously as specifically American or as belonging to any particular region of America, but they are always readable and make a little book that will be enjoyed by every one who reads it
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(The Bookman)

If any one were to name the best quality of the western school of fiction, it would be a very fine sincerity untouched by cynicism Faithfulness to humanity and yet a belief in the real human nature that it finds This is the best democracy

Mrs Peattie has done some work very characteristic of her school, and yet individual One is impressed at the very outset with the honesty vitality of her observations They give such stories as Jim Lancy s Waterloo,” and ‘A Michigan Man their hold on the imagination and memory the tragedy of the life that spends all its force in a brute struggle with the soil is as forcibly put in the first of these as anything by Hamlin Garland The tales which make this volume have not only straightforward dress and vigor to commend them they include stories which only a woman could write The quality of the volume makes us look with hope to Mrs. Peattie a literary future
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(New York Tribune)

The collection of brief stories of western life which Mrs. Elia W. Peattie put forth under the title of ‘A Mountain Woman’ is decidedly out of the ordinary These tales are vigorous in conception, and are gracefully and effectively told, and are, in a field rendered dangerous ground by Bret Harte, strikingly original Here and there the not is perhaps, a trifle strained as in the title story but the poetic feeling which pervades the narrative more than off gets the defect The mountain scenery is depicted graphically, and the author may rest assured that the sense of natural grandeur which she aimed to convey in her descriptions, and to typify in the person of her heroine, Judith, has been transmitted with entire success The poetry of nature is, however, for from monopolizing Mrs. Peattie s talents in proof of this attention is directed to the grim tragedy with which the story entitled “Jim Lancy’s Water [?] closes and the simple pathos of

The Th[?]e[o?] Johns and of A [Resuseltation?] The temptation to be s[?] mental in the tale of the last name must have been strong and if anything were needed to convince the impartial reader that Mrs. Peattie is a writer of ability it in the success with which she has avoided falling into this invit[ial?] [t?]rap