SOURCE: "Elinor Wylie," in The Spyglass, Views and Reviews, 1924-1930, Vanderbilt University Press, 1963, pp. 115-17.

In the following review, originally published in the "Critics Almanac" of The Spyglass, Davidson considers Angels and Earthly Creatures to be Wylie's best book of poetry and praises her use of traditional sonnet forms.

The day before she died, it happened that Elinor Wylie was arranging for publication a book of poems. This book now appears under the title Angels and Earthly Creatures. Everywhere it reads as if she had the taste of death already on her tongue, so that one is moved to wonder whether Elinor Wylie did not, like Shelley, foresee her fate. However that may be, there is little doubt that Angels and Earthly Creatures is her best book of poetry. It is more or less free from the finical toyings with words for their own sakes that had seemed...