SOURCE: "Average Citizen in Grub Street: Christopher Morley After Twenty-Five Years," in The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. XLI, No. 1, January, 1942, pp. 18-31.

In the following essay, Altick points to Morley's faded reputation as a writer.

There is, in each man's heart,
 Chinese writing—
 A secret script, a cryptic language;
 The strange ideographs of the spirit,
 Scribbled over or half erased
  By the swift stenography of daily life,
 "The Palimpsest" from Translations from the Chinese

Few people nowadays can be accused of taking Christopher Morley too seriously. But there is an equal error in taking him too much for granted. Thanks to the succès de scandale of Kitty Foyle his name is now more than ever a household word in America. For the past twenty-five years the presses have uttered his books with melancholy regularity. His burly figure, his beard, and his eternal pipe are familiar to lecture...