“The Lively Lady is the best historical novel we have read in years. After considering soberly the works of William Stearns Davis and S. Weir Mitchell and Rafael Sabatini and the earlier Robert W. Chambers, we’ll go even further. We have read no better book of its type than The Lively Lady, anywhere, any time. It drives, full-sailed and rail under, logging a yarn of the War of 1812 and the privateers that were America’s chief substitute for a navy. There is a mighty gusto in the book, controlled and disciplined by writing of high merit. It hurries you along through frothing sea and pungent powder smoke and the grim ordeal of Dartmoor Prison with no respite in its traction. His people are real, his situations plausible, his style a delight. To this reviewer The Lively Lady stands quite as high in the aristocracy of historical romance as Hugh Wynne, and it is quite possible that the patina of years will make it seem even finer.”

—Frederic F. Van de Water.

PORTLAND EXPRESS:

“The Lively Lady has everything that a good historical novel must have, brilliantly assembled in a manner certain to send racing the blood of every man and woman whose circulation has become sluggish because of the poor diet offered by so many of today’s writers.”

—Robert B. Beith.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER:

“In The Lively Lady the author evinces not only an artist’s fusing power, but the patient erudition of an historical student. Mr. Roberts has put into fiction the essence of American history.”

CAPTAIN CAUTION

NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE:

“You haven’t turned more than the first page of Captain Caution before you realize that Kenneth Roberts is writing the best purely historical novels of our day.”

NEW YORK TIMES:

“Captain Caution brings to life a period of our Colonial history with which every American should be acquainted.”

SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE:

“It is such powerful writing as that in Captain Caution describing the British hulks, the prisoners and their escape that sets Mr. Roberts’ work apart from that of most historical novelists.”

NORTHWEST PASSAGE

NEW YORK TIMES:

“It is the eternal pageant of the 18th Century that keeps one reading Northwest Passage to the very end. Of Robert Rogers Ann says: ‘Ah, no! You can’t kill what was in that man!’ And it seems you can’t—not with Kenneth Roberts to bring him back out of the star dust and make him again so real.”

—R. L. Duffus.

SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE: