Henry James and the Invention of Novel Theory

Abstract

Henry James's literary critical essays, especially the Prefaces that he wrote for the New York Edition of his fiction (1905-7), have generally been regarded as the foundational documents for Anglo-American novel theory. When we look at the series of major books devoted to James's criticism - works ranging from Joseph Beach's The Method of Henry James (1918) and R. P. Blackmur's The Art of the Novel (1934) to James E. Miller, Jr.'s Theory of Fiction: Henry James (1972) - we can understand why. James's discussion of novels seems qualitatively different from what had gone before: James dignified fiction by talking about it as art. Although consumed by a popular audience in search of entertainment and written by anyone who could pick up a pen, although often hurriedly composed to meet a deadline for magazine serialization, although about virtually anything at all, novels and short stories could, in the right hands, James declared, be as aesthetically significant as poetry, painting, or drama. But had James merely proclaimed fiction to be capable of artistic greatness, novel theory might still have had to wait to be born. James is credited with inventing a new discipline because he not only deemed the novel worthy of critical analysis but also helped establish the terms for that analysis. In collecting the eighteen Prefaces to the New York Edition into one volume, Blackmur was moved to call these essays "the most sustained and I think the most eloquent and original piece of literary criticism in existence" (The Art of the Novel, viii; hereafter cited as Art ). And in his even more comprehensive collection of James's statements about fiction, Miller marvels that James "remained remarkably consistent in his views from the beginning to the end of his career" (xv).