"This is not only a brilliant book but a lovable one, a joy to read not only for its insights but for its modesty, its playfulness, its wholesomeness of outlook on literature and the critical activity. This is not primarily a book for Sarah Orne Jewett scholars, nor it is just for Americanists or even academics. It is a book for anyone who has been deeply touched by literature and has thought about the relation between the 'moving' and the 'great.'
—Leslie Brisman, Yale University