The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction (Paperback)

In The Art of Criticism William Veeder and Susan M. Griffin have brought together for the first time the best of the Master s critical work: the most important of his Prefaces which R. P. Blackmur has called the most sustained and I think the most eloquent and original piece of literary criticism in existence ; his studies of Hawthorne George Eliot Balzac Zola de Maupassant Turgenev Sante-Beuve and Arnold; and his essays on the function of criticism and the future of the novel. The editors have provided what James himself emphasized in his literary criticism-the text s context. Each selection is framed by an editorial commentary and notes which give its biographical bibliographical and critical background and cite other references in James work to the topic discussed. This framework along with the editors introduction gives the reader a sense of the place of these pieces in the history of criticism.