In a 28 January 1907 letter, "Lord of the World" was praised by Frederick Rolfe. Commenting on Benson's decision to satirize him as "Chris Dell" in "The Sentimentalists", Rolfe wrote, "You are worrying yourself most unnecessarily about me, I assure you... I am laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing though I must confess that I was rather amazed when I heard that everybody recognized me in Chris. It was rather a blow to my "amour propre"... You will, I hope, reap a rich harvest of shekels from the transaction, and the world will forget "The Sentimentalists" when it stands wondering before "The Lord of the World"."