Coppard, A. E. - Hermon Child (essay date 1925)

Hermon Child (essay date 1925)

SOURCE: "A. E. Coppard's Stories," in The Bookman, London, Vol. LXVIII, No. 407, August, 1925, pp. 255-56.

[In this review of Fishmonger's Fiddle, Ould notes the unusual vision of the world that is expressed in Coppard's stones and lauds the subtle craftsmanship of the author's work.]

Mr. Coppard's stories are not, like so many short stories, the by-product of a novelist. He is primarily a writer of short stories, and so far as I am aware has never written a novel. By confining himself to a single form—I leave verse out of the reckoning—he has attained [in Fishmonger's Fiddle] a sureness of touch which is in striking contrast with the tentativeness of his first volume, Adam and Eve and Pinch Me. We now find no echoes of his preferences in literature: what he offers us is pure Coppard. His work is not, as Maupassant's is, objective. The world he paints is a world seen through his own...

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