SOURCE: "A Ladies' Miscellany," in A Victorian Album: Some Lady Novelists of the Period, Columbia University Press, 1946, pp. 3-45.

In the following excerpt, Stebbins finds Gore's novels "insipid, " criticizing their lack of plot development and well-drawn characters, and pointing out her tendency to over-indulge in foreign phrases and polysyllabic words.

The always moral, always trite [Catherine] Gore (1800-1861) exerted royal authority over English readers by a combination of inflexible standards of behavior and a knowledge of aristocratic circles. Where she learned so much about the upper classes is a matter of conjecture; she was born into a mercantile family, but seems to have been the stepdaughter of a Dr. Nevinson; at twenty-three she married Lieutenant Charles Arthur Gore, who retired almost immediately from the army and subsequently assisted her in the writing of plays and novels. They lived some years in France and in Belgium, where he died...