The book became somewhat controversial for a famous section in which James enumerated the items of novelistic interest he thought were absent from American life.

This is the only book-length study James wrote about a fellow novelist, and it is not surprising he picked Hawthorne for such extended treatment.

The tradition Hawthorne began in American literature – the morally intense exploration of the universality of guilt and the ambiguities of human choice – was clearly carried on by James.

Although James expressed misgivings about some of Hawthorne's more extravagant symbolism and heavy reliance on allegory, he shared his predecessor's constant interest in moral quandaries, divided loyalties, and the inevitable conflicts between imaginative protagonists and intractable reality.

James' ranking of Hawthorne's novels, from The Scarlet Letter down to The Marble Faun, has generally been accepted by later critics.