"Subject to the qualifications thus disposed of (vide first part of notice), 'An Outcast of the Islands' is perhaps the finest piece of fiction that has been published this year, as 'Almayer's Folly' was one of the finest that was published in 1895.... Surely this is real romance—the romance that is real. Space forbids anything but the merest recapitulation of the other living realities of Mr. Conrad's invention—of Lingard, of the inimitable Almayer, the one-eyed Babalatchi, the Naturalist, of the pious Abdulla—all novel, all authentic. Enough has been written to show Mr. Conrad's quality. He imagines his scenes and their sequence like a master; he knows his individualities and their hearts; he has a new and wonderful field in this East Indian Novel of his.... Greatness is deliberately written; the present writer has read and re-read his two books, and after putting this review aside for some days to consider the discretion of it, the word still stands."—Saturday Review.

Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P.

"This is a decidedly powerful story of an uncommon type, and breaks fresh ground in fiction.... All the leading characters in the book—Almayer, his wife, his daughter, and Dain, the daughter's native lover—are well drawn, and the parting between father and daughter has a pathetic naturalness about it, unspoiled by straining after effect. There are, too, some admirably graphic passages in the book. The approach of a monsoon is most effectively described.... The name of Mr. Joseph Conrad is new to us, but it appears to us as if he might become the Kipling of the Malay Archipelago."—Spectator.

"Mr. Louis Becke wields a powerful pen, with the additional advantage that he waves it in unfrequented places, and summons up with it the elemental passions of human nature.... It will be seen that Mr. Becke is somewhat of the fleshly school, but with a pathos and power not given to the ordinary professors of that school.... Altogether for those who like stirring stories cast in strange scenes, this is a book to be read."—National Observer.

"The appearance of a new book by Mr. Becke has become an event of note—and very justly. No living author, if we except Mr. Kipling, has so amazing a command of that unhackneyed vitality of phrase that most people call by the name of realism. Whether it is scenery or character or incident that he wishes to depict, the touch is ever so dramatic and vivid that the reader is conscious of a picture and impression that has no parallel save in the records of actual sight and memory."—Westminster Gazette.

"Another series of sketches of island life in the South Seas, not inferior to those contained in 'By Reef and Palm.'"—Speaker.

"The book is well worth reading. The author knows what he is talking about and has a keen eye for the picturesque."—G. B. Burgin in To-day.

"A notable contribution to the romance of the South Seas."

T. P. O'Connor, M.P., in The Graphic.