SOURCE: "In 'Celibate Lives': A Study of Inadequate Living," in The New York Times Book Review, October 2, 1927, p. 6.

Duffus was an American novelist, critic, and nonfiction writer. In the following favorable review, he provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of Celibate Lives.

The enlightened few have been rolling George Moore's prose over their tongues these many years. Much of it has not been readily accessible to the general reader. This publication of Celibate Lives at a price the public has learned to pay cheerfully enough for half the novels it reads is consequently of considerable importance. Just what will George Moore signify to the larger audience he may now expect? First, however trite the observation may be, he will signify a sense of style—not style as a mere parade of words, a beating of drums, but style arising out of a harmony of mood, of tempo and...