Published as one of the final chapters of Winesburg, Ohio, "Sophistication" received positive criticism when it first appeared in 1919. In the New Republic, Maxwell Anderson remarked, "As a challenge to

the snappy short story form, with its planned proportions of flippant philosophy, epigrammatic conversation and sex danger, nothing better has come out of America than Winesburg, Ohio. . . . It was set down by a patient and loving craftsman; it is in a new mood, and one not easily forgotten." The acerbic critic H. L. Mencken, whom Anderson himself criticized for making fun of small-town folks, nevertheless declared that "What remains is pure representation— and it is representation so vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own. Nothing quite like it has ever been done in America. It is a book that, at one...