SOURCE: “A Book of Novels,” in Bookman, Vol. 49, No. 291, December, 1915, p. 97.

In the following review of My People, Pugh praises the harsh depictions of the Welsh people, maintaining that “the justification of this book consists in its ineludible truth.”

Comparative criticism is the last ditch of the defeated. The critic who, confronted with the new work of a new author, can only compare it with the work of other, older authors—almost always to the older authors' advantage—is manifestly either shirking his task or confessing his incompetence. To say that one book is like or unlike, better or worse, than another, is as informing and illuminative as to say that a parsnip is like or unlike, better or worse, than a beetroot. They are wholly distinct and different things, as each piece of literature must be wholly distinct and different from any other piece of literature. If...