Among contemporary writers of English children's books, E. M. Almedingen probably had one of the most colourful family backgrounds, and this was reflected in much of her writing, particularly in the later years when she turned to children's books. (p. 149)

[Characters] in her adult novels such as The Scarlet Goose or Stand Fast Beloved City or even Frossia, seem dead—indeed they do have '… wood in their breast and water in their veins', as she herself said, although potentially, the stories could have lent themselves to much livelier treatment. (p. 151)

[It] is in her last two books for children, Fanny and Ellen that one can most clearly make the comparison between her writing for adults and for children. The first of these stories is based on the surviving notes of her aunt Frances-Hermione, who used to visit them in St. Petersburg, and is an account of the life of her mother's family at Avchourino, their country estate in Russia, and the early years of their exile to France. The second volume, Ellen, tells the story of the childhood and early married life of grandmother Ellen, up to the birth of Frances, with a brief epilogue covering the remainder of her life. This is a straight re-working for children of the biography first published in 1958. It is possible to compare details, seeing where an incident has been adapted, a sentence changed to suit the younger readership, and it is fascinating to observe the way in which characters who were merely flat descriptions on the pages of the first book come alive under their new treatment. E. M. Almedingen never wrote down to children; one never feels in the reading that she made conscious concessions to vocabulary or understandings, but clearly she was more at ease in the less complex, freer world of childhood than in the emotional entanglements of the adult novel. (pp. 151-52)

I suspect that it will be for her children's books, written during the last few years, that she will be best remembered. It would seem that her family were quite right in their belief that 'literature was a realm to be won only after a mature and solemn dedication'. In children's books she had found her true metier and it is a great pity that she did not live long enough to exploit it fully. Had she lived, I am sure that sooner or later she would have returned to her own story, begun in the reminiscences of I Remember St. Petersburg, bringing early twentieth-century Russia to life as no textbook could do, and providing a magnificent foil to those less personally involved who have already made the attempt. (p. 152)

Children fascinated by the legendary figures of Russia's early history will be grateful [for the publication of] Rus into Muscovy by … E. M. Almedingen; twenty-three short chapters sketch in the major upheavals from 862, when the Slav tribes became one nation, to 1613, when Michael Romanov was proclaimed Tsar. One cannot pretend that the prose is limpid, and those sufficiently interested to persevere will surely be scholarly enough to regret that there is no index. (p. 1518)

The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1971; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), December 3, 1971.