In the chapter "Critical Reaction," Hughes makes the statement that "few comments on the [imagist] movement have appeared in English periodicals. The effect is that of a conspiracy of silent scorn." Hughes wrote this in 1931, but his book remains today, one of the standard studies of the imagist movement, so his seventy-year-old opinion seems to be still standing. Hughes claims that the critics who did write about Imagism were usually either the imagist poets themselves or else their friends.

The only comments that were made were either brief sarcastic remarks or "mutual backscratching," Hughes concludes. Of the sarcastic remarks, he mentions Harold Monro, who wrote an article in the Egoist, a largely imagist publication. Monro writes, "the imagists seem to have been struck partially blind at the first sight of their new world; and they are still blinking."

Ford Maddox Ford (using his German last name...