At a time when realism is all but monopolizing literature, one experiences a sensation of delighted relief in encountering "Show Boat." It is gorgeously romantic—not in the flamboyant and artificial manner of the historical romance …; not staggering beneath a weight of costume and local color. "Show Boat" comes as a spirited, full-breasted, tireless story, romantic because it is too alive to be what the realists call real; because it bears within itself a spirit of life which we seek rather than have; because it makes a period and mode of existence live again, not actually different from what they were, but more alluring than they could have been. "Show Boat" is romantic not because its people and events violate any principle of possibility, but because they express a principle of selection….

After the days of Mark Twain, the Mississippi holds small place in American literature. Now it reclaims its place….

All art is a luxury in the sense that it fills a place beyond the physical necessities of life, but some art there is which is entirely ornamental, which does not reveal life, or probe character, or feed the soul. "Show Boat" is such a piece of writing—a gorgeous thing to read for the reading's sake alone. Some, perhaps, will conscientiously refer to it as a document which reanimates a part of the American scene that once existed and does no more. But this writer cannot believe it is that; rather it is a glorification of that scene, a heightening, an expression of its full romantic possibilities.