SOURCE: “Modernizing James,” in The Kenyon Review, Vol. VII, No. 2 Spring, 1945, pp. 311-15.

In the following mixed assessment of Henry James: The Major Phase, Rahv perceives Matthiessen's analysis as lacking, but deems the volume a significant study of James's later novels.

This book [Henry James: The Major Phase] is an important contribution to the growing literature about Henry James. For all the talk of James as a neglected figure there is scarcely another American writer who has of late aroused so much critical ardor and discussion. Since the James number of The Little Review (1918) numerous appraisals of his work have appeared; and this intellectual opinion has at long last filtered down to the middlebrow public, so that now James can be said to be enjoying something of a vogue in circles heretofore indifferent to his reputation. Nevertheless one can safely predict that a good many readers, whether highbrow...