Malvern

Mrs Hubback (Catherine Anne Austen)  is well-known and highly esteemed as a writer; for her novels are in themselves good, and they have additional interest as coming from the niece of Miss Austen. It is true that Miss Austen's works are as generally neglected as they are universally eulogized, and that, instead of reading them in private and condemning them in public, most people do not peruse them in the closet or anywhere else, and yet make a point of praising them in the drawing-room. Still it is not less the fact that her name and genius, though not popular, are generally approved, and that the consequences of this singular regard have been most beneficial to Mrs. Hubback in literature. Mrs. Hubback has been and promises to be the most prolific creator of novels, for we believe that The Younger Sister, The Wife's Sister, The Rival Suitors, The Old Vicarage, May and December, Malvern, Life and its Lessons, and Agnes Milbourne, are not all the fictions which have proceeded from her pen since the commencement of 1850. (Novels and novelists: from Elizabeth to Victoria by John Cordy Jeaffreson, 1858)


Contemporary Review

This, as a portion of the title indicates, is a picture of society, and it may, for aught we know to the contrary, be a very correct one; if it be, we cannot envy the Welsh. The Watering-place is in Wales, and the people appear to be Finns. There is, however, a life-like manner of telling things, that puts the reader quite at home. The opening of the book is particularly good, both as an opening, and in point of execution. There is one fault, which is chronic, and affects the whole fiction: the story turns upon one person passing himself off for another —a thing so old that it was objected to very shortly after Rome was built. Despite this, the story is not impossible, though the more incredulous will be forgiven for withholding their entire assent to its probability. It is well handled, and brought to a denouement reasonably powerful. There is much good writing, and what is better, some good thinking. (The Criterion: Literary and critical journal, March 1, 1856)