SOURCE: Untermeyer, Louis. “Deborah: Mr. Abercrombie's Verse Drama of Life among Fisher Folk.” New York Times Book Review (15 June 1913): 357.

In the following review, Untermeyer assesses Abercrombie's verse drama Deborah as one of the finest examples in its genre of its day.

Just as the critics have proved, to their own satisfaction, that the classics are dead, that restraint and nobility of thought have perished beneath the blows of a savage and incoherent realism, that a sonorous blank-verse drama cannot be written to-day except possibly in slang, Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie is discovered—and smash go all their solemn predictions and glum assurances. Not that Mr. Abercrombie is any less “modern” than his contemporaries—he is often more brutal than Masefield, more direct and incisive than the Abbey Theatre dramatist—he has, in short, all the qualities that make him a product of his times. But there is one thing...