Partial Portraits
1888
Henry James called them 'partial portraits' because no critic can capture a life entire. What he offers instead is something rarer: the keen, discriminating attention of a master novelist turned literary anatomist. This 1888 collection gathers his essays on the giants of his age, from Emerson's transcendental calm to George Eliot's moral seriousness, from Stevenson's romantic restlessness to Turgenev's pastoral grace. James is never merely appreciative; he dissects, compares, and sometimes gently demolishes. His essay on Daniel Deronda becomes a conversation in itself. But the collection's crown jewel is 'The Art of Fiction,' James's bracing manifesto for literary freedom that still resonates over a century later. Here is criticism written with the sensibility of a novelist who understands that the gap between a life and its telling is where all the interest lives.
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James, Henry. Partial Portraits. Lex, lex-books.com/book/partial-portraits-cee138a3-9e7a-47b0-9d0f-8ca3b47fd8b0.James, H. (1888). Partial Portraits. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/partial-portraits-cee138a3-9e7a-47b0-9d0f-8ca3b47fd8b0James, Henry. Partial Portraits. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/partial-portraits-cee138a3-9e7a-47b0-9d0f-8ca3b47fd8b0.
