SOURCE: A review of Altiora Peto, in The Athenaeum, Vol. 2, No. 2913, August 25, 1883, pp. 231-32.

In the following review, the critic examines the characters in Altiora Peto and comments on the work as social satire.

In Altiora Peto, as in Piccadilly, Mr. Oliphant presents himself to the novel-reading world as one made up of equal parts of theosophist and social cynic, mystic and man of the world, the student of earthly character and manners and the student of divine mysteries. He has an abundance of wit, great knowledge of men and women and society, and as much of the satirical habit—the tendency to attack with laughter, and to make unpleasant or improper things ridiculous—as any one since Lord Beaconsfield. And to these qualities he adds an interest in the spiritual, and a conviction as to its adaptability to purposes of fiction, only to be paralleled in the...