‘There is always a touch of the fairy-tale in Sir Walter Besant’s romances.... He steeps the workaday world in a transfigurating medium, and eerie incidents, impossible coincidences, fine and subtle sentiments, beautiful love stories of pure passion, all appear in keeping.... In “The Master Craftsman” Sir Walter Besant’s admirers will find no cause for disappointment.... It is charming, it is informed with the healthiest spirit, and it is optimistic, chivalrous, picturesque.’—Daily News.

‘“The Master Craftsman” opens with a brilliant prologue, not the less enjoyable because it recalls the opening chapter of “Treasure Island.”... The story contains romance, a sort of ethical adaptability to the social conditions of the present time, a ripe humour in the delineation of character, and a pervading poetry or eloquence that makes the prose of the book seem modulated by the inflections of a living voice. The book reveals no new development of its author’s powers, but shows them undiminished and fresh; and it will be read with enjoyment and admiration by everyone who takes it up.’—Scotsman.

‘What we ask of Sir Walter Besant are pleasant and inspiriting hours of wholesome entertainment. These he never fails to provide. He has provided them once again in “The Master Craftsman,” and we are grateful accordingly, and know that his book will have all the success of its predecessors.’—Daily Chronicle.

‘In “The Master Craftsman” Sir Walter Besant has a subject to his heart’s desire.... He has a bit of old London to describe, and he does it in a very lifelike and workmanlike fashion. Here the permanent value of the book comes in.... To write a novel like “The Master Craftsman” must be to enjoy oneself. It fairly beams on its readers.’—Sketch.

‘Sir Walter Besant is, in one respect at least, a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, for he knows London in all its picturesque nooks and corners, and how to invest tales of mean streets with romantic interest. He knows human nature also—the wholesome, sweet, sturdy human nature which is not troubled with neurotic moods, or intent on the solution of doubtful problems in morals.... This well-written, quite improbable, but not on that account less fascinating, romance.’—Leeds Mercury.

‘... This sense of a living and kindly voice addressing you doubles the charm of the story. This charm you feel particularly in Sir Walter Besant’s last delightful romance, where only the living voice could hold you hypnotically spell-bound till you accept unquestioningly the wonderful Wapping idyll.’—Illustrated London News.

‘Life in the East End among the working bees and life in the West among the drones and butterflies of Society are pictured with equal skill, the characters are vigorously drawn, the incidents are always interesting and occasionally exciting. In a word, “The Master Craftsman” is a fresh, picturesque, wholesome bit of fiction, full of interest.’—Court Journal.

‘In “The Master Craftsman” Sir Walter Besant is revealed in his very sunniest mood.... The story is throughout a delightful one, rich in character-drawing.’—Lady.

‘In Sir Walter Besant’s pleasant romance of Wapping-on-the-Wall, the hundred-year old mystery of the bag of jewels makes a delightful background of fairy-tale to a plot and motive thoroughly modern and realistic.’—Spectator.

‘Sir Walter Besant has not been able to resist the attraction of the jewel-treasure story, and we are glad he has succumbed to it, for he has written one of the very best of the many romances whose hearts are the sparkling futile things.’—World.

‘There is about the story a touch of quixotism and romance which gives it a charm of its own, and in the hands of an experienced writer the tale is plausibly and agreeably told.’—Westminster Gazette.

‘“The Master Craftsman” is certainly as pleasant a story as any Sir Walter Besant has yet given to the world, and pleasantness is a quality none too common in the fiction of the day.... Sir Walter Besant’s optimism is always enjoyable, and often, as we know, truly beneficent to a world over-given to pessimism.’—Queen.

‘With a great deal of skill in the telling, and with much delightful description of London as it now is and as it was last century, Sir Walter Besant records ... the triumph of will and nothing over incapacity and everything.... The story is charmingly told, with a kind of artless optimism that is well-nigh captivating.’—Academy.