American Theorists of the Novel - Henry James, Lionel Trilling, Wayne C. Booth (Routledge CriticalWhy read James, Trilling, and Booth? The answer may not be immediatelyobvious. Writing from the 1860s and through to the early twentieth century, Henry James (1843–1916) is most widely renowned for works such as The Wings of the Dove (1902b), The Golden Bowl (1904), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and his ghost story, ‘The Turn of the Screw’ (1898). But he also published ground-breaking prefaces to his own fiction and numerous critical essays. Lionel Trilling (1905–75) became well known as a literary critic in a 1950s academic scene dominated by, as we shall see, the ‘New Criticism’ of earlier decades.