Editing Henry James (section)

==Reception==
===Criticism, biographies and fictional treatments===
[[File:LambHouseInterior.jpg|thumb|upright|Interior view of Lamb House, James's residence from 1897 until 1914 (1898)]]
James's work has remained steadily popular with the limited audience of educated readers to whom he spoke during his lifetime, and has remained firmly in the canon, but after his death, some American critics, such as [[Van Wyck Brooks]], expressed hostility towards James for his long expatriation and eventual naturalisation as a British subject.<ref>Brooks (1925)</ref> Other critics such as [[E.&nbsp;M. Forster]] complained about what they saw as James's squeamishness in the treatment of sex and other possibly controversial material, or dismissed his late style as difficult and obscure, relying heavily on extremely long sentences and excessively [[latinate]] language.<ref>Forster (1956) pp. 153–163</ref> 'Even in his lifetime,' explains scholar Hazel Hutchinson, 'James had a reputation as a difficult writer for clever readers.'<ref>[https://theconversation.com/the-real-henry-james-will-never-stand-up-thats-his-greatest-legacy-55455]. The Conversation. Retrieved 10 January 2021.</ref> [[Oscar Wilde]] criticised him for writing "fiction as if it were a painful duty".<ref>[http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/o/oscar_wilde_6.html Oscar Wilde Quotes – Page 6]. BrainyQuote. Retrieved 10 August 2011.</ref> [[Vernon Parrington]], composing a canon of American literature, condemned James for having cut himself off from America. [[Jorge Luis Borges]] wrote about him, "Despite the scruples and delicate complexities of James, his work suffers from a major defect: the absence of life."<ref>Borges and de Torres (1971) p. 55.</ref> And [[Virginia Woolf]], writing to [[Lytton Strachey]], asked, "Please tell me what you find in Henry James.&nbsp;... we have his works here, and I read, and I can't find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar and pale as [[Walter Lamb (classicist)|Walter Lamb]]. Is there really any sense in it?"<ref>[http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=17800 Reading Experience Database Display Record] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110813030643/http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=17800 |date=13 August 2011 }}. Can-red-lec.library.dal.ca. Retrieved 10 August 2011.</ref> Novelist [[W. Somerset Maugham]] wrote, "He did not know the English as an Englishman instinctively knows them and so his English characters never to my mind quite ring true," and argued, "The great novelists, even in seclusion, have lived life passionately. Henry James was content to observe it from a window."<ref>W. Somerset Maugham, ''The Vagrant Mood'', p. 203.</ref> Maugham nevertheless wrote, "The fact remains that those last novels of his, notwithstanding their unreality, make all other novels, except the very best, unreadable."<ref>Maugham, op. cit., p209.</ref> [[Colm Tóibín]] observed that James "never really wrote about the English very well. His English characters don't work for me."<ref>[http://radioopensource.org/colm-toibin-the-living-spell-of-henry-james/ Colm Tóibín in conversation with Chris Lydon, in Cambridge, 2004] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919020257/http://radioopensource.org/colm-toibin-the-living-spell-of-henry-james/ |date=19 September 2015 }}. Retrieved 7 December 2015.</ref>

Despite these criticisms, James is now valued for his psychological and moral realism, his masterful creation of character, his low-key but playful humour, and his assured command of the language. In his 1983 book, ''The Novels of Henry James'', [[Edward Wagenknecht]] offers an assessment that echoes Theodora Bosanquet's:

{{blockquote|text="To be completely great," Henry James wrote in an early review, "a work of art must lift up the heart," and his own novels do this to an outstanding degree&nbsp;... More than sixty years after his death, the great novelist who sometimes professed to have no opinions stands foursquare in the great Christian [[Christian humanism|humanistic]] and democratic tradition. The men and women who, at the height of [[World War&nbsp;II]], raided the secondhand shops for his out-of-print books knew what they were about. For no writer ever raised a braver banner to which all who love freedom might adhere.<ref>Wagenknecht (1983) pp. 261–262</ref>}}

[[William Dean Howells]] saw James as a representative of a new realist school of literary art, which broke with the English romantic tradition epitomised by the works of Charles Dickens and William Thackeray. Howells wrote that realism found "its chief exemplar in Mr. James&nbsp;... A novelist he is not, after the old fashion, or after any fashion but his own."<ref>Lauter (2010) p. 364.</ref> [[F. R. Leavis]] championed Henry James as a novelist of "established pre-eminence" in ''[[The Great Tradition]]'' (1948), asserting that ''The Portrait of a Lady'' and ''The Bostonians'' were "the two most brilliant novels in the language."<ref>F. R. Leavis, ''The Great Tradition'' (New York University Press, 1969), p. 155.</ref> James is now prized as a master of point of view who moved literary fiction forward by insisting in showing, not telling, his stories to the reader.