SOURCE: The Writings of Alfred Edgar Coppard, by Jacob Schwartz and A. E. Coppard, The Ulysses Bookshop, 1931, 73 p.

The following excerpt is taken from a work in which Coppard provides notes to accompany Schwartz's bibliography of the author's writings. Coppard here reacts to selected reviews and criticisms of his short story collections.

The reviews [of Clorinda Walks in Heaven] on the whole were . . . very friendly, and The Outlook began its notice with a headline, "The Critic Walks in Heaven", but there was certainly one justifiable protest from an Irish paper:

To crowd two illegitimate births, five deaths, and one murder into nine short stories is something of a strain on one's patience in a country where there are plenty of things to breed pessimism.

I got a really colossal biff from the Sunday Times:—

Mr. A. E. Coppard has done much better work aforetime, and, it is pretty...