The Critical Review, uncertain whether to read the book as fact or fiction, said that if it was fiction it ought to have conformed to the principle of poetic justice.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2d ser. 1 (1791): 469
Literary responses
Susanna Haswell Rowson
The Critical Review was unimpressed by this novel: a strange medley of romance, history, and novel, in which the scenery is changed with the pantomimical rapidity of Voltaire
's Candide. . . . aukwardly...
Publishing
Susanna Haswell Rowson
The London edition, from William Lane's Minerva Press, appeared in probably late 1799 (without the author's preface). A scholarly edition by Joseph F. Bartolomeo
came out in 2009.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
Rowson, Susanna Haswell. “Introduction; Susanna Haswell Rowson: A Brief Chronology”. Reuben and Rachel, edited by Joseph F. Bartolomeo, Broadview, 2009, pp. 8-34.
Rowson, Susanna Haswell. Reuben and Rachel. Editor Bartolomeo, Joseph F., Broadview, 2009.