He was one of the founders and a longtime contributing editor of the "Saturday Review of Literature". A highly gregarious man, he was the mainstay of what he dubbed the "Three Hours for Lunch Club". Out of enthusiasm for the Sherlock Holmes stories, he helped found The Baker Street Irregulars and wrote the introduction to the standard omnibus edition of "The Complete Sherlock Holmes". He also wrote an introduction to the standard omnibus edition of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" in 1936, although Morley called it an "Introduction to Yourself as a Reader of Shakespeare". That year, he was appointed to revise and enlarge "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" (11th edition in 1937 and 12th edition in 1948). He was one of the first judges for the Book of the Month Club, serving in that position until the early 1950s.