The Scotsman 4 July 1901.

Mr. Conrad's reputation as a novelist is mainly founded on his studies of life in the East Indies and on the high seas. In The Inheritors he has deserted the scene that he has made so familiar to his readers and dealt with modern political and financial intrigue. Yet though he has changed the scene of interest and taken to himself a collaborator, The Inheritors has all the characteristic features of his work, and notably a certain curious obscurity. His characters never seem quite to understand what they want to say or have a singular difficulty in expressing themselves summarises the plot. How the ropes are pulled, how one politician is ruined and another makes his name, it must be left to the reader to discover for himself. It is a very able piece of work and a capital story, though it must be admitted it is considerably weighted by a notion which is calculated only to annoy, and adds nothing to the interest.

The Manchester Guardian 10 July 1901.

It is difficult in limited space to give an idea of this curious and entertaining book, which seems to begin lightly enough but concentrates into an oppression and leaves us with some doubts of our sanity and more of our effectiveness describes the inhabitants of the Fourth Dimension. Before these superhuman beings we have no more chance than with the Martians of Mr. Wells. The authors are exceedingly adroit in their half-revelations, in writing round the thing, and they carry us over some thin places with suggestions that stop short of committal. We see the world as a huge imposture with a front for show and a backstairs life of politics, journalism, and finance—the last stand of a decent humanity against the ‘boom.’ It is suggested that our particular morality is a false start, but it appears to us that there is a central weakness in that the so-called virtues and probities used for the purposes of the story are not the real thing. And though there is an expression of sound sense from a country grocer that helps us, democracy plays no part in the struggle…