Most critics consider The Beggar Maid to be an important addition to the catalogue of exceptional story cycles produced by Canadian writers since 1896, when Duncan Campbell Scott's In the Village of Viger established the cycle form in Canada; indeed, one critic has suggested that since Scott's book the cycle has become "something of a subgenre" within Canadian literature.

With its formal and thematic emphasis on the interdependence of its constituent stories, Munro's book shows a formal and general thematic relationship with such notable Canadian works as Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912) and Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914), George Elliot's The Kissing Man (1962), which shares a sense of place and historical time with Munro's book, and Margaret Laurence's A Bird in the House (1970).

In an international context, The Beggar Maid reflects to varying degrees the creative ingenuity of early and contemporary contributors to...