Miss Sedgwick is one among the few American writers who have risen by merely their own intrinsic talents, and without the a priori aid of foreign opinion and puffery, to any exalted rank in the estimation of our countrymen. She is at the same time fully deserving of all the popularity she has attained. By those who are most fastidious in matters of literary criticism, the author of Hope Leslie is the most ardently admired, and we are acquainted with few persons of sound and accurate discrimination who would hesitate in placing her upon a level with the best of our native novelists. Of American female writers we must consider her the first. The character of her pen is essentially feminine.
Woman is, after all, the only true painter of that gentle and beautiful mystery, the heart of woman.
She is the only proper Scheherazade for the fairy tales of love. We think The Linwoods superior to Hope Leslie , and superior to Redwood . It is full of deep natural interest, rivetting attention without undue or artificial means for attaining that end. It contains nothing forced, or in any degree exaggerated. Its prevailing features are equability, ease, perfect accuracy and purity of style, a manner never at outrance with the subject matter, pathos, and verisimilitude.