Henry James as book critic is the subject of this Vidal essay, largely based on publications by the Library of America in a single volume of all of James' reviews of books by American and English writers. James began reviewing books at the age of 23 ("far too young," Vidal asserts) while he was still an American resident and before he was sent to Paris as a correspondent for the New York Tribune.
Vidal notes that James found the milieu of D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers depressing, as well as that of Thomas Hardy in a review of Far from the Madding Crowd. James detested dialect novels—British or American—and called Hardy's novel "singularly inartistic." As a young man, James also had no use for George Eliot and her.....
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