“The first part has an unintermittent imaginative intensity, a Rembrandt-like breadth of literary chiaroscuro, and a vigorous realism of that relentless kid which of late has exercised such a fascinations over both writers and readers; and it leaves the impression of immense activity.
In the remainder of the book this creative energy is put into harness and made to drag a heavy chariot, or rather a prosaic cart, filled with theories – theories of education, of heredity, and sexual morals, the result being that its paces are subdued to a spiritless amble which is unspeakably depressing.
In the Kurts of Tomas’s ancestry there is a rich warmth of baleful vitality; we feel the palpitation of their wild hearts; and their story may be fitly described as a Norse Wuthering Heights.
Had the writer continued to work the imaginative vein struck in the opening chapter, The Heritage of the Kurts would have been a romance of sombre power; as it stands, it is ineffective, with that kind of ineffectiveness which must be found wherever creation is dominated by polemics.”
James Ashcroft Noble, ‘The Heritage of the Kurts: book review’, The Academy, London:1892
