One of them is a graceful eulogy for his friend, the great actress Frances Anne Kemble, with "her fine, anxious humanity, the generosity of her sympathies, and the grand line and mass of her personality."

The other is a surprisingly emphatic defense of Henrik Ibsen, whose work caused London audiences to "sweep the whole keyboard of emotion, from frantic enjoyment to ineffable disgust."

James shows his usual interest in French writers with three essays including a perceptive appreciation of Pierre Loti, who "speaks better than anything else of the ocean, the thing in the world that, after the human race, has most intensity and variety of life."

The wisest speaker finally concludes: James' ability to understand and appreciate writers very different from himself shines through this book's essays on Ibsen and Loti.

The essay on Ibsen has biographical relevance and even poignance for James, who would experience a very public failure in the theater just a few years after this book was published.