Aet. 46, to a German man of letters; at this time he was the editor of Das litterarische Echo, a fortnightly literary periodical in Berlin. Arthur Symons, to whom Evelyn Innes was dedicated, spent part of the winter of 1898-1899 in Seville, Spain.
In “Evelyn Innes,” Die Nation (13 August 1898), Heilborn recalled meeting George Moore in 1896 in London, when Heilborn was the German editor of T. Fisher Unwin’s Cosmopolis magazine. Despite critical acclaim for the realism of Esther Waters, he learned that George’s artistic intentions were imaginative; that he probed for subjective rather than objective truth. Evelyn Innes was thus a creative step forward from Esther Waters, a breakthrough for all literature: the human condition shown not in actions or appearances but in sentiments.
A German translation of Esther Waters appeared in 1904; the following year a German Evelyn Innes appeared without a preface by Heilborn.
William Ewart Gladstone’s praise of Esther Waters was reported shortly after publication in the Westminster Gazette, helping the book gain attention and commercial success. George referenced the praise in A Communication to My Friends (Chapter 9) though he had discounted Gladstone’s opinions on art in “Advertised Incompetency,” Hawk (15 April 1890).
Tolstoy’s copy of Esther Waters is now in the Leo Tolstoy State Museum, Moscow.
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