SOURCE: Benét, William Rose. “The Misadventures of Young Lovers.” Saturday Review of Literature 11, no. 3 (4 August 1934): 33.

In the following review, Benét finds Defy the Foul Fiend a disappointment after the success of His Monkey Wife.

There are two books for which everyone should evermore praise John Collier. One is the novel, His Monkey Wife, which appeared a few years ago, and the second his editing of what he has called The Scandal and Credulities of John Aubrey. In their several ways I do not know which I like better; but I do know that I like both passing well.

Therefore when I opened a new novel by him with such a grand title as Defy the Foul Fiend, and such an appealing introductory quotation from Shakespeare as “Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul...