Jamaica Inn [makes] one realise how high the standard of entertainment has become in the modern novel. I do not believe R.L.S. [Robert Louis Stevenson] would have been ashamed to have written Jamaica Inn, with its smugglers, wreckers, wild moors, storms, its sinister inn, misplaced confidences, pretty and gallant heroine, and romantic love story…. There is here all the melodrama that one can desire—and let nobody say "It is an old fashion." The old fashion was good. (p. 144)

Sean O'Faolain, in The Spectator (© 1936 by The Spectator; reprinted by permission of The Spectator), January 24, 1936.