In a penetrating examination of Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, What Maisie Knew, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl, Hutchinson shows that, like the major American authors who preceded him, Henry James was necessarily a modernist in the sense of being a fabricator rather than an imitator of reality.

In a penetrating examination of Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, What Maisie Knew, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl, Hutchinson shows that, like the major American authors who preceded him, Henry James was necessarily a modernist in the sense of being a fabricator rather than an imitator of reality.