SOURCE: "Rediscovery and Romance," in The Dial, Chicago, Vol. LXIII, July 19, 1917, pp. 65-7.

In the following essay, Seldes offers a favorable assessment of Limehouse Nights and Nights in Town.

The two substantial books of tales and sketches of London which Mr. Thomas Burke has collected and published since the war began are of a stuff which the world may find outmoded in the unhappy years to come. They are books which might have become only items in the "new literature" of the century's second decade had the revolution of war not prevented, for Mr. Burke is not only one of those who rediscovered romance; he is also of those who taste to the full the romance of their own rediscovery.

Some fifteen tales of Limehouse, the Chinese quarter of London in "the thunderous shadows of the great Dock," and some twenty sketches of London complete Mr. Burke's present...