ABSTRACT
The image of the 'house of fiction', with its many views from many different windows Henry James' 1908, was obviously never intended by James himself to refer to anything other than the practice of literary fiction. Whatever may be one's views on history more broadly, it is certainly tempting to view the history of planning as having very much the character of a narrative genre, although exactly which genre, and what style of narrative, may depend on one's point of view—on the window from which it is seen. This chapter explores the guiding idea, the idea of the window that appears in Henry James' account of the 'house of fiction'. That exploration has led to a consideration of some of the history of the window as a way of understanding our engagement with the world—whether through fiction, history, planning, or any other mode.
