Gertrude Atherton - Quotes

Quotes

Charlotte S. McClure in a Dictionary of Literary Biography essay said she (Atherton): "redefined women's potential and presented a psychological drama of a woman's quest for identity and for a life purpose and happiness within and beyond her procreative function, " She also said that Patience Sparhawk was Atherton's "first significant novel."

In a 1898 essay in Bookman, a critic stated:

"the amazing and memorable Patience Sparhawk may perhaps be referred to as the first foreshadowing of the good work that has done since. It seems to have been also generally conceded that no matter what the subject chanced to be . . . nothing from her pen would be commonplace or dull. that startling performance introduced her to a different audience, one much larger and more seriously interested than she had had before."

Carl van Vechten said of Atherton in a Nation article: "Usually (not always, to be sure), the work of Mrs. Wharton seems to me to be scrupulous, clever and uninspiring, while that of Mrs. Atherton is often careless, sprawling, but inspired. Mrs. Wharton, with some difficulty, it would appear, has learned to write; Mrs. Atherton was born with a facility for telling stories."

In an essay for Bookman, Frederic Taber Cooper stated that in Senator North, the character Harriet "is practically a white woman but for a scarcely perceptible blueness at the base of her fingernails, this character of Harriet is perhaps the best bit of feminine analysis that Mrs. Atherton ever did."

Atherton's autobiography Adventures of a Novelist (New York: Horace Liveright, 1932) is a lively, often quotable, account of both her own tempestuous life and the many remarkable people, including Ambrose Bierce and Senator James Duval Phelan, who filled it. It is also features engaging historical reminiscences of San Francisco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.