Moore's fellow late nineteenth-century novelist George Gissing wrote there was "some pathos and power in latter part, but miserable writing. The dialogue often grotesquely phrased".[2]
In a 1936 review of a series of books published by The Bodley Head and Penguin Books, appearing in The New English Weekly, George Orwell described Esther Waters as "far and away the best" of the 10 books in the series. Describing the novel as Moore's best and comparing it to W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, Orwell noted certain stylistic flaws but argued its "fundamental sincerity makes its surface faults almost negligible."[3]
