A tale of resurrection ...

... Book Review: Monopolizing the Master - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Literary criticism ... did what it could to sink James's reputation further. In 1916, Rebecca West wrote a dismissive little book on James, claiming that, in his aesthetic approach to the novel, he had failed to grasp the harsh reality of life. (E.M. Forster would later make roughly the same case against James.) In 1925, Van Wyck Brooks wrote "The Pilgrimage of Henry James," in which he argued that James greatly diminished his talent by deserting America for England. In "Main Currents in American Thought" (1927), Vernon Parrington wrote that James sought a "habitation between worlds and [found] a spiritual home nowhere. . . . From the external world of action he withdrew to the inner world of questioning and probing; yet even in his subtle psychological inquiries he remained shut up within his own skull-pan. . . . He came to deal more and more with less and less." Parrington ended by comparing James unfavorably with Sherwood Anderson, "an authentic product of the American consciousness!"