SOURCE: "Female Novelists," in New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 95, June, 1852, pp. 157-68.

In the following overview of several of Gore's novels, Jacox—who contends that "the fashionable novel occupies but humble rank" among literary genres—nevertheless praises Gore for her "facile mastery of the materials with which she works."

What constitutes a first-rate novel is a problem which might raise consternation in the senate-house of Cambridge; a problem knotty enough to stagger the entire corporation of wranglers, and strike the senior ops "all of a heap," and impel the junior ops (wooden spoon and all) to take refuge in suicide. When a plenary and all-satisfying definition has once been given, it will be time to append to the main proposition the accompanying "rider:" viz., whether the accomplishment of a first-rate novel is within the potential limits of female genius—whether it lies within or beyond the frontiers assigned to...