SOURCE: "Bright as a Windblown Lark," in The New Yorker, Vol. XXXVI, No. 9, April 16, 1960, pp. 172, 174, 177-78.

In the review below, Maxwell lauds Lee's portrait of family, neighbors, and village life in The Edge of Day.

The common reader will put up with absolutely anything, but how like getting a stock split or finding a four-leaf clover it is to read a book by a writer who has managed to separate the material that is his from everybody else's, whose style is an approximation of his own manner of speaking, and who with some courage lays his cards on the table. The Edge of Day, by Laurie Lee, meets all three of these requirements, and is beautiful besides, as one would expect the autobiography of a poet to be—beautiful, rich, full of stories, full of the humor that fountains from unsuppressed human beings, full of intelligence and point...