SOURCE: "E. V. Lucas," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. 42, April, 1940, pp. 221-35.

In the following essay, Smith offers a reservedly positive assessment of Lucas.

In these hectic days, when the attitudinizing writer has invaded the pages of even the most conservative of our American magazines, it is a pleasure to find among the L's on the shelf of the public library a half dozen loose-leaved, dog's-eared volumes, essay novels or, as he himself styled them, "entertainments" from the pen of E. V. Lucas. A fashion more than a quarter of a century out of use, and staled by the great publishing houses, he still holds his own in quiet reading rooms, where middle-aged librarians mention him with respect. It is difficult to account for a popularity, moderate though it undoubtedly is, which continues to defy the laws of probability. Lucas, downright Quaker and unswerving democrat that he was...