Given the subjects of most of her works, it was widely assumed that the Compton-Burnett family were landed gentry; in his review of the final volume of Hilary Spurling's biography, J. I. M. Stewart wrote: "this persuasion she did nothing to controvert... when her ardent admirer and close friend Robert Liddell engaged in a somewhat demeaning rummage in Burke and Crockford in search of distinguished Compton-Burnetts whether living or dead and gone, he was astonished to discover none at all.