SOURCE: Review of Cousin Phillis, in The Bookman, Vol. XXXV, No. 206, November, 1908, pp. 98-9.

Below, the anonymous critic favorably reviews Cousin Phillis.

To most of us the name of Mrs. Gaskell has hitherto spelt Cranford. Comparatively few of us have any personal knowledge of this fragrant idyll, Cousin Phillis, which first saw light in the Cornhill in the early 'fifties, and is now ably and tenderly introduced by Mr. Thomas Seccombe to a forty-five-year-later audience. To read Cranford and Cousin Phillis now, and realise their respective dates, is to pause surprised at their order of production. Cranford came first—came, indeed, among Mrs. Gaskell's earliest writings, and Mr. Seccombe remarks: "Based upon generalised reminiscences of early childhood and youth, Cranford is coloured too with the riper tints of autumn, and the wonder is that these hues of sadness should be manipulated to so exquisite an issue by so...