SOURCE: Engelberg, Howard. “James and Arnold: Conscience and Consciousness in a Victorian Künstlerroman.” In Henry James's Major Novels: Essays in Criticism, edited by Lyall H. Powers, pp. 3-27. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1973.

In the following essay, originally published in 1968, Engelberg argues in his examination of Roderick Hudson that Henry James was the first author writing in English to utilize the künstlerroman's “artist's dilemma” as a plot device for a novel.

In his recent study of the artist-hero in fiction, Maurice Beebe examines the scores of novels in nineteenth-century English fiction which might be considered, even in the remotest way, as dealing with the “Artist-Hero,” or simply with artist types.¹ With the exception of Henry James, Beebe's list is unimpressive. Almost all the novels he cites, from Disraeli's Contarini Fleming to Thackeray's The Newcomes, remain unread today. Not until the turn of the century...