ABSTRACT

Few critical works have the marvellous and compelling intellectual power that James gave to the preface to The Golden Bowl. The exploration of his method, the reflections on the character and value of the novel form, on the powers of language and the `sovereign truth' of the artist, constitute an intellectual enterprise with a life of its own. If through some freakish circumstance the novel itself had vanished and the preface alone remained, we could follow its speculations and imagine the scope and richness of the missing masterpiece. And one effect of this grandeur is the authority which certain claims have had over the reading of The Golden Bowl itself.