Hepburn countered that one of the novels most frequently praised by literary critics is "Riceyman Steps" (1923) set in Clerkenwell, London, and dealing with material imagined rather than observed by the author. On the third point he commented that although received wisdom was that "The Old Wives' Tale" and "Clayhanger" are good and "Sacred and Profane Love" and "Lillian" are bad, there was little consensus about which other Bennett novels were good, bad or indifferent. He instanced "The Pretty Lady" (1918), on which critical opinion ranged from "cheap and sensational" ... "sentimental melodrama" to "a great novel". Lucas (2004) considers it "a much underrated study of England during the war years, especially in its sensitive feeling for the destructive frenzy that underlay much apparently good-hearted patriotism".