Dedicated to George W. E. Russell, to whom Vachell relates to the main characters of the book: "there are such boys as Verney and Scaife, nobody knows better than yourself." Russell describes his own time at Harrow in a chapter of his autobiography.

Wilfrd Owen also read the book and described it in the February 21, 1918 letter to his mother, Susan Owen: "Am now reading a book by Vachell The Hill, a tale of Harrow, and the hills on which I never lay, nor shall lie: heights of thought, heights of friendship, heights of riches, heights of jinks. Lovely and melancholy reading it is for me."