Maugham also wrote critically about it in his semi-autobiographical work, "The Summing Up" (1938), commenting "If one takes the trouble to look through the volumes of "The Yellow Book", which at that time seemed the last thing in sophisticated intelligence, it is startling to discover how thoroughly bad the majority of its contributors were. For all their parade these writers were no more than an eddy in a backwater and it is unlikely that the history of English literature will give them more than a passing glance."