SOURCE: "The Short Story and the Novelette: Anton Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield, A. E. Coppard, and Others," in Modern Fiction, Columbia University Press, 1934, pp. 348-403.

In the following excerpt, Brewster and Burrell illustrate Coppard's versatility in depicting a wide variety of character types and life experiences.

If one were asked what Mr. A. E. Coppard's sketches and stories and tales are about, one might for the moment be at a loss for an answer, so varied is his range of interest, and then one would say, "They're about life." That's what Mr. Coppard presents—life. This is, theoretically, what all writers do; but of many story writers one feels that their province is a little world of their own; that they have invented a much too pleasant and orderly garden and have attempted to fit life into these confines; and that their portrayal of life is debased and falsified...