"The Grave" was first published in the Virginia Quarterly Review in 1935, but it did not receive much critical attention until it was published again in 1944 as part of a collection of stories, The Leaning Tower and Other Stories. In this collection, "The Grave" was grouped with a smaller collection of short stories focusing on the character of Miranda, called "The Old Order."

Early reviews of The Leaning Tower and Other Stories were mainly positive, hailing Porter as a careful stylist and an important contributor to the genre of the American short story. In The Saturday Review, Howard Mumford Jones admired the stories' "smooth literary texture" and the "exquisite rightness" of her style. However, he also criticizes her for an "approach [that] sometimes reminds one of a cat stalking its prey with unnecessary caution," suggesting that her roundabout storytelling methods decrease the stories' dramatic power. Similarly, Joseph...