"A modern heroine who is neither artistic not literary, but a downright coquette of the old-fashioned kind, is Bab, the only daughter of one of Miss Whitby's earlier heroines. Mary Fenwick, is a healthy, handsome girl, who is far too fond of dogs and horses. Human admirers bore her, and she has more than her share of them. It is only to escape their importunities that she determines to marry Jack, who like many another worthy fellow, is willing to forego ambition for the love of a vain woman. Bab leads Jack a merry dance after their betrothal, and it seems for a time that the marriage is out of the question. But Jack does marry Bab-there's a happy ending, brought about by a vixenish runaway mare- and Jack's wife is a cripple for life. He can manage her, then, after a fashion."
-N. Y. Time' [1894] "We have no hesitation in declaring that "The Awakening of Mary Fenwick" is the best novel of it kind that we have seen for some years. It is apparently a first effort and, as such is really remarkable. The story is extremely simple. Mary Fenwick marries her husband for external, and perhaps rather inadequate, reasons, and then discovers that he married her because she was an heiress. She feels the indignity acutely and does not scruple to tell him her opinion, her very candid opinion of his behavior. That is the effect of the first few chapters, and the rest of Miss Whitby's book is devoted to relating how this divided couple hated, quarreled, and finally fail to love with one another. Mary Fenwick and her husband live and move and make us believe in them in a way which few but the great masters of fiction have been able to encompass."
-Athenaeum [1898]