"Hugh Walpole is a literary force to be reckoned with. He knows life; he is not afraid to depict it. He can be sympathetic without being sentimental. He is afraid neither of pleasure nor pain--nor of seeming to fear the conventionalities. He has the true idea of romance. He knows that the enchanted land of adventure may be found in a London boarding house as surely as on stormy seas or in deep hidden gold mines. He knows that man’s fiercest battles seldom are fought to the accompaniment of cannon. He knows that loneliness is one of the hardest, one of the most universal of humanity’s tests and sorrows. _Fortitude_ is a book to read more than once, to ponder. Instinct with life and vigor, lovers of sentiment, fighting, psychology, romance, realism, each will find it worth while."--_The Chicago Record-Herald_. "_Fortitude_ is a book of splendid strength and significance. It is done with much care for workmanship and with a large understanding of the meaning of life, so proving doubly worth while.... Throughout the book is marked by a penetrating knowledge of humanity, so that it brings one continually into touch with real people and real human crises."--_The Continent_. "Mr. Hugh Walpole has the faculty of infusing vibrant life into his characters in fiction, and in _Fortitude_ he presents one of the strongest and best novels of the season."--_The Baltimore Sun_. "The people here are as real as life. The theme is big. The movement is controlled and steady, a leisurely movement, as stories that deal with character rather than action must be. The sketches of London, in their whimsically personal note, make one think of Dickens in the same field. The whole is big in every sense. One of the two or three or maybe four novels of the year that will live to celebrate even a single birthday."--_The Washington Evening Star_. "There is not a dull page in the book. Its people are real flesh and blood beings, with courage, with love and with humor in their souls. All of them are interesting, while the circumstances which surround them in _Fortitude_ increase the delight of the many readers the book is certain to achieve."--_The Boston Globe_. "The book is full of thought. Mr. Walpole has written a chapter of life, pure and simple. The reader cannot skip one page."--_The Philadelphia Public Ledger_. "Fortitude is a great book. It marks the arrival of Hugh Walpole as a novelist to be reckoned with. We will await further performance with an anticipation like that with which we look forward to a new Five Towns tale by Bennett."--_Norma Bright Carson in Book News Monthly_. "One of the remarkable novels of the year. This is a great book."--_The San Francisco Chronicle_. "This book of humor, romance, and realism is a pæan of youth and strength and love, a valiant and bracing sermon."--_The Nashville Tennessean_. THE DUCHESS OF WREXE