Because [Miss Forbes] is a novelist, she is interested in character. British redcoats and Boston tories, James Otis and Sam Adams and John Hancock, are delineated sharply and judicially [in "Paul Revere and the World He Lived In"], with the novelist's eye for idiosyncrasy. The daily habit of life—business, political, domestic, and social—is admirably recreated. Miss Forbes occasionally permits herself the luxury of too much detail. It appears to be a fault of the novelist turned historian. Sometimes, when the available facts limit her scope, she overindulges in speculation on the probabilities. It does not, for example, increase our understanding of the Revere household in 1770 to have Miss Forbes muse that the eldest child, Deborah, aged twelve, was "a great help to her mother and grandmother, unless she was unusually backward." It merely raises a disagreeable and apparently unwarranted suspicion about Deborah.
But these are minor flaws in a book which, in the fidelity of its research and the wisdom of its presentation, makes an important contribution to American history. Miss Forbes has ably and graciously performed the task of setting hard facts against the fabric of a well-loved story. (p. 163)
Margaret Leech, "Legend and Hard Fact," in The Yale Review (© 1942 by Yale University; reprinted by permission of the editors), Autumn, 1942, pp. 161-63.
This is a free excerpt of 217 words. There are 221 words (approx.
1 page at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Forbes, Esther 1891–1967: Critical Essay by Margaret Leech Access Pass.
