Edited with an Introduction by Leon Edel & Gordon N. Ray.
First published, 1958. Second impression, 1959
In this volume will be found the record of an historic disagreement between two famous novelists. They fell out — as novelists will — about the purpose and practice of their craft. Both were gifted men, both could give extraordinary utterance to their beliefs, and their dispute inevitably attracted wide attention. It began as an amicable and private dialogue on Olympus, but its ending was not without a note of high drama, for one of the novelists lost his temper. 'Leviathan retrieving pebbles... a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea,' wrote H. G. Wells of Henry James’s elaborations of the art of fiction. To which James replied: 'It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.'
Author(s): Henry James, Herbert George Wells, Leon Edel, Gordon N. Ray (eds.)
Publisher: Rupert Hart-Davis
Year: 1959
Language: English
Pages: 272
City: London
FOREWORD 9
INTRODUCTION 15
1. AN EVENING AT THE PLAY, 1895 43
By H. G. Wells
2. GUY DOMVILLE AT THE ST. JAMES’S, 1895 48
By H. G. Wells
3.-51. LETTERS, 1898-1911 52
Henry James and H. G. Wells
52. THE CONTEMPORARY NOVEL, 1911 131
By H. G. Wells
53-64. LETTERS, 1912-1914 156
By H. G. Wells
65. THE YOUNGER GENERATION, 1914 178
By Henry James
66. DIGRESSION ABOUT NOVELS, 1934 215
By H. G. Wells
67. OF ART, OF LITERATURE, OF MR. HENRY JAMES 234
By H. G. Wells
68-70. LETTERS, 1915 261
Henry James and H. G. Wells
INDEX 269
