Pritchett writes as one who has been nourished rather than inhibited by his literary forebears. Though the tradition to which he belongs has shown signs of enfeeblement in recent years, with its writers too often manifesting a weakened grasp, a contracting range, Pritchett himself is able to confront Mrs. Thatcher's England with an almost Edwardian assurance of his right to move at ease among its phenomena, to seize upon what he wants, and to do so without apology or self-consciousness. He displays an undiminished faith in the existence of a substantial, knowable world external to himself—a world full of quirky types with whose perplexities his imagination can play. (p. 25)

Pritchett is the least snobbish of English writers, a clear-eyed but amiable democrat who treats his characters [in the collection "On the Edge of the Cliff"] with sublime fairness, playing no favorites, settling no scores. They are created substantially, with strong, sometimes eccentric outlines. Often their behavior is droll. But they are by no means "humors" characters in the manner of Dickens and his predecessors, for they have not been allowed to harden into crustacean-like rigidity; instead, they are presented as capable of sudden insights and moral qualms, of sudden reversals of course that suggest complexity and depth. Essentially Pritchett is a psychological realist who permits his characters to keep their options open while sparing them that diffusion or dissolution of ego so common in our psychologizing age. In this respect they seem more distinctively, more "archaically" English than American….

Like most of the stories in the collection, "On the Edge of the Cliff" is shrewdly constructed, though not at all, in the accepted sense, "well made." While full of twistings, the narrative line is sinewy; the surprises—and there are many in a good Pritchett story—never seem arbitrary. The play of language in the stories is also full of odd turnings, with a freshness of imagery that is sometimes startling and nearly always a source of delight….

Containing only one story ("The Spanish Bed") that I would consider a relative failure, On the Edge of the Cliff may well be his strongest collection to date. In both his vision and his craft, Pritchett has currently no equal as a short-story writer in England—and only a few elsewhere in the English-speaking world. (p. 26)