The book collected essays that James had written over the preceding two decades on French, Italian, English and American writers.

He notes the eloquence and power of their descriptions of sexual passion, but he believes sex becomes too isolated from the rest of their characters' lives.

In The Wings of the Dove James provides a memorable example of how Densher and Kate's sexual passion does enter into the rest of their lives and becomes much more than the act of a moment.

Some of the judgments James made in these essays, especially his pronouncements on younger novelists in The New Novel, were harshly dismissed as limited and incorrect.

James really did believe in his famous "house of fiction" image, where writers looked at life from different windows and thus returned interestingly varied reports.