Crabbe's poetry was predominantly in the form of heroic couplets, and has been described as unsentimental in its depiction of provincial life and society. John Wilson wrote that "Crabbe is confessedly the most original and vivid painter of the vast varieties of common life that England has ever produced;" and that "In all the poetry of this extraordinary man, we see a constant display of the passions as they are excited and exacerbated by the customs, laws, and institutions of society." "The Cambridge History of English Literature" saw Crabbe's importance to be more in his influence than in his works themselves: "He gave the poetry of nature new worlds to conquer (rather than conquered them himself) by showing that the world of plain fact and common detail may be material for poetry".