ABSTRACT
Henry James was wont to call himself a writer of romances. The romantic seems to have represented for him originally a rejection of the United States he knew just after the Civil War, a society by all accounts engrossed in demagoguery and money-getting, but permitting to its women that genteel loop-hole of 'Romance' through which James was able to make his escape. It was of course Europe that started James on his romantic way. His conception of drama had suffered a growth and change like that of his conception of the romantic. In the group of novels which includes The Golden Bowl he proceeded to realize in a rather inappropriate medium the drama he had thus discovered. His prefaces make this technical feat clear enough, but the relevant hints are widely scattered, and there is still room to try to focus them on The Golden Bowl, and in the process understand and place James's drama a little.
