This excellent short biography…brings out both the charms and the complexities of Stendhal. The tone of the book is discreetly admiring, but ironic enough when need be to remind one of the saving and consummate irony of its subject.
-- John Sturrock New York Times Book Review

[An] excellent and balanced biography.
-- Anita Brookner Times Literary Supplement

A Lion for Love is a splendid example of a rare and difficult critical genre: a biography which chronicles and interprets development of a character of complex imaginative genius, and at the same time introduces a lucid critical reading of his works.
-- Julia Epstein Washington Post Book World

The publication of A Lion for Love, by Robert Alter with the collaboration of his wife, Carol Cosman, supplies at last a fine, perceptive, concise critical biography of Stendhal, written with a clarity and good sense worthy of its subject… Alter and Cosman…wear their erudition with becoming lightness.
-- John Simon New Leader

A Lion for Love is a model of critical biography—a fascinating biography of a fascinating man.
-- Larry McMurty Washington Star