ABSTRACT
Henry James makes what for him is the crucial distinction between the novelist – or ‘dramatist’ as he calls himself on this occasion – and the biographer. D. H. Lawrence, in his essay, ‘Why the Novel Matters’, makes a similar claim for his chosen literary form. James and Lawrence wrote at a time when the novel might be said to have achieved its highest status as a literary form: it is perhaps understandable that they should have felt free to forget the historical context that might have reminded them that their earliest predecessors had often found it necessary to present their novels as pseudo-biographies. When jesting Pilate speculated on the nature of truth he took the practical course of dismissing the question, and it is very doubtful whether the biographer could have resolved it for him.
