Henry James's Criticism

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English novelists as a rule make little effort to relate theory and practice; but with Henry James the effort was constant, and his elaboration of technique, his proneness to identify moral and aesthetic perfection, his astonishing flexibility of style, are all aspects of a consciously evolved theory. Morris Roberts in this volume analyses James’s artistic faith, the ideas enmeshed in the “story of one’s story,” as James calls his Prefaces. He thus traces James’s development as a critic from rather crude beginnings in book-reviewing to the finely wrought criticism of his mature years, which for sensitiveness and perfection of form is perhaps unequalled in English.