Judith Woolf's elegantly written book introduces school and university
students, as well as the interested general reader, to the major novels
of Henry James (1843-1916), the American writer who became a great
European novelist and died a naturalised Englishman. The principal
novels in which James explored his central theme, the betrayal of
innocence, are discussed in a lucid way which offers fresh
intrepretations and communicates to the non-specialist reader the
excitement rather than the difficulty of reading James. Difficulty is
nonetheless often a feature of his work, and Judith Woolf does not shun
important questions. She places him in the context of the history of the
English novel (Fielding, Richardson, Dickens, and George Eliot),
focusing on traditions of tragic and comic vision and on the subtleties
of expression and perspective enabled by the narrative form. The book
includes a short account of James's life, a list of his works and their
dates, and a selected guide to further criticism.