SOURCE: "A. E. Coppard and H. E. Bates," in The English Short Story 1880-1945: A Critical History, edited by Joseph M. Flora, Twayne Publishers, 1985, pp. 113-41.

In the following essay, Gindin discusses similarities between the works of Coppard and H. E. Bates. He also details the prominent themes and techniques employed in Coppard's fiction.

In 1971 Granada Television produced a series of dramatic adaptations entitled Country Matters from some of the stories of A. E. Coppard and H. E. Bates. Critically successful and highly popular in England, Country Matters was later exported to the United States and shown on the Public Broadcasting Service stations. The series both drew on and reinforced a connection between the two writers in the general critical and public consciousness, which thought of them as practitioners of the short-story form dealing unpretentiously with rural English life and representing something both ordinary and quintessentially English. From...