In a “Memorandum,” H. M. Alden advised his superiors at Harper and Brothers against accepting The Ambassadors. He noted, “the scenario is interesting, but it does not promise a popular novel.” Alden was correct; the novel has never been a widely read book. But David Lodge was not exaggerating when he summed up the place of James’ novel in the English canon. In his 20th Century Literary Criticism, Lodge wrote, “more than any other single writer, James may be said to have presided over the transformation of the Victorian novel into the modern novel, and at the same time to have laid the foundations of modern criticism of the novel.” Gore Vidal agreed, saying that in James’s third period of work, “the magician” broke his “Golden Bowl” and reached the height of his powers.

The incredible awe in which James was held before his death checked original critical reception of the novel. Many of the first reviewers were writers themselves, like Joseph Conrad or Virginia Woolf. Most critics followed the novel’s preface and praised the book, while those who wrote negatively betrayed a lack of understanding. A singular exception was H. G. Wells who engaged in a series of misunderstandings with James. In “Of Art, of Literature, of Henry James,” Wells explained that he simply disagrees with James’ presumptions about the novel. James, said Wells, “wants a novel to be simply and completely done. He wants it to have a unity, he demands homogeneity . . . Why should a book have that?” Ezra Pound shortly thereafter, replied, “I am tired of hearing pettiness talked about Henry James’s style.” For style was indeed the issue of the negative reviews—the book was found to be difficult. Pound, instead, felt James was a champion of individual liberty.

The critical mood of the 1920s, like the culture at large, wanted nothing to do with prewar culture. In America, H. L. Mencken took a shot at James in an essay within his A Mencken Chrest- omathy. He felt James needed to smell reality; “James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs from the Chicago stockyards.” Americans were not alone in their negative assessment. E. M. Forster took special notice of The Ambassadors in his Aspects of the Novel. Forster found that the novel was “pattern triumphant” and “beautifully done, but not worth doing.”

Renewed appreciation for James came in the 1930s but was very defensive. Mostly, this criticism followed James’ own preface and interpretations laid down by early apologists, like Joseph Warren Beach and Percy Lubbock. In The Craft of Fiction, Lubbock revealed the degree to which he was a follower of James by explaining James’ working theory of the novel. Lubbock set criticism’s focus on the idea that “the point of view is primarily Strether’s,” which would be the mainstay of approaches to The Ambassadors for almost fifty years. In that span of time, a few critics dared to investigate social forces underpinning the novel. Granville Hicks, who noted that few people were interested in James but those that were formed a “kind of James cult,” explored James’ theme of civilizations clashing in “The Great Tradition.” Hicks noted James’ divided loyalties as the reason for his “peculiar fitness for the portrayal of the international scene,” a skill that he developed between Roderick Hudson and The Ambassadors.

The scholarly engagement with James didn’t really take fire until the centennial of his birth in 1943 and at first differed little Lubbock. In an essay from 1943, R. P. Blackmur’s appreciation of James was less defensive. Blackmur detailed the...