SOURCE: A review of A Village Romeo and Juliet, in The New York Times Book Review, March 29, 1914, p. 142.

In this favorable review, the critic praises the simplicity and poetic nature of the language in Keller's novella .

Mrs. Wharton's "Introduction" to this novelette of a hundred and fifty pages [A Village Romeo and Juliet] is both biographical and critical. Her sketch of the author's life is very brief and deals only with such of its chief outstanding facts as were concerned with his literary work. But her account of his most important books is sympathetic and illuminating, showing how the life, the work, and the character of the man interacted upon one another, and, with clear insight into his literary values, summarizing his greatness and his shortcomings. It is among German writers, she says, that Gottfried Keller must be classed, although he was born in Switzerland. In Zurich he...