SOURCE: Review of Miss Mackenzie, in The Nation, New York, Vol. I, July 13, 1865, pp. 51-2.

As a novelist James is valued for his psychological acuity and complex sense of artistic form. Throughout his career, James also wrote literary criticism in which he developed his artistic ideals and applied them to the works of others. Among the numerous dictums he formed to clarify the nature of fiction was his definition of the novel as "a direct impression of life." The quality of this impression—its level of moral and intellectual development—and the author's ability to communicate this impression in an effective and artistic manner were the two principal criteria by which James estimated the value of a literary work. In the following excerpt, James disparages the highly detailed depictions of common life in Trollope's fiction, contending that the result is debased and vulgar. Although James discusses one of...