THE CONQUEST OF LONDON (465 pp.) and THE MIDDLE YEARS (408 pp.), Vols. II & III of HENRY JAMES—Leon Edel-—Lippincoft ($ 17). Boswell started it all. Ever since the canny Scot earned himself a niche in ...

Whatever else it may be, a piece of literary criticism is also always a confession — a surreptitious declaration of its author’s hopes for her own work. What, then, was the novelist Henry James ...

The whole of the man was in the special work—he was all a writer, a critic, an appreciator. He was literary in every pulsation of his being, and he expressed himself totally in his literary life. No ...

Literature is fragile. It serves no obvious purpose. But it is also as close to immortal as any cultural endeavor has ever been. By Gerald Howard If you’re reeling after the final episode of Season 3 ...