Publisher's Synopsis
A review from the "Philadelphia Times":
Some of these essays present this writer at his best. He has put by a good many of the affectations of youth without losing any of his youthful charm. The opening essay is not merely fanciful, nor merely graceful; it is clearly and well thought, and will provoke thought in the reader. There are other bright bits, like the fancy of "The Blue Jar," and along with these are some bits of literary criticism and some smart newspaper work that will scarcely last and perhaps does not deserve to.
A review from "The Critic," Volume 38:
Mr. Le Gallienne is one of those fortunate penmen who find a publisher - and presumably, therefore, a public - for their slightest utterances. He reads a book, and writes a review of it; sometimes it is not even a book that he reads and writes of, but only an article in an encyclopedia; or he makes a holiday trip to Denmark, or lunches with a friend, or rides from Oxford Circus to the Bank in an omnibus. Each of these most exciting incidents is turned to account in the form of a newspaper sketch, which duly reappears in a daintily printed book from the Bodley Head. And as the author's pretty talent for stringing words together about nothing in particular has its admirers, and as no one has to buy his books who doesn't wish to, no earthly harm is done by the publication of his innumerable pot-boilers.
An excerpt from "The American Monthly Review of Reviews," Volume 23:
Mr. Richard Le Gallienne leaves one freer to admire his felicity of phrase and grace of method in his newest, handsome little book of essays, Sleeping Beauty and Other Prose Fancies (John Lane), for there is decidedly less obtrusion of Le Gallienne than one has been led to fear by earlier utterances. The essays are in miniature, no less than twenty-two getting within the covers of this neat little volume. One of them briefly gives the author's impressions of America, another defends Mr. Stevenson from Mr. George Moore's strictures, while the most striking number of all is largely occupied in "showing up" what is cheap and bad in some of Mr. Kipling's works. Mr. Le Gallienne admits that "The Absent-Minded Beggar" is a "fascinating jingle;" but he thinks it "unworthy to represent so great and so distinguished a country as England at such a moment."
