A review by George Saintsbury from The Academy [1877] Mrs. Notley has dedicated her book (her ninth, she adds) to her children, whose voices, she tells us, have often cheered her toil. There is no accounting for tastes in writing, and after somebody else's avowal of a fancy for the noise of children running about overhead, surprise would be futile. When we ourselves take to the production of immortal works we shall, we imagine, prefer silence around and above us; but, after all, those who have actually produced such works have no doubt the best right to be heard. We do not know whether the amiable confusion of Mrs. Notley's surroundings is responsible for the fact that she has called her book on the outside "Love's Young Dream," and on the inside "Love has Eyes" but perhaps at the last she faltered before the enunciation of such an heretical dogma as the latter. Be this as it may, however, Love's Young Dream deserves a good deal of praise. Its kind is not one for which we have any special affection, but of its kind it is most unusually good. It is very rare to find a ninth novel better than its preceding eight, but this is certainly the case with the book before us. The exaggerated oddities which characterized Olive Varcoe and its successors are not, indeed, wanting at first. The people produce, for instance, some very strange atmospheric effects. One speaker's "disgust and bitterness seem to fill up all the atmosphere around him with a breath of gall." Another "laughs an uneasy laugh, and there creeps into the air around him a dull sense of annoyance and fear." In the next page No. l's "words fall as tranquilly and coldly as snow," and shortly afterwards his "reply strikes the ear like the thud of bullets." Every reader will, we feel sure, hope sincerely that he may never meet this remarkably-gifted person. But the object of Love's Young Dream is evidently not to supply us with model English or with model sense. It is, on the other hand, to provide strong sensations and a mysterious plot. And this object is satisfactorily carried out. The book possesses undoubtedly the power of interesting despite its occasional absurdities; and its interest is of the kind which, if we were reviewing in another style, we should, we suppose, call breathless. Miss Coralie Luttrell, with her remarkable horsewomanship, her mysterious parentage and persecutions, and her final incarceration in an inflammable pavilion on a lonely island with a drunken murderer who considerately suggests that she had much better commit suicide and thereby save him the risk of being hanged, is quite an engaging character. It would be wanton unkindness to say how the book ends, so we shall not say it. But, if anybody wants a little gentle excitement, without the danger of being too much ashamed of himself for being excited, let him read "Love's Young Dream."