Henry James and H. G. Wells: A Record of Their Friendship, Their Debate on the Art of Fiction, and Their Quarrel

Edited with an Introduction by Leon Edel & Gordon N. Ray.

First published, 1958. Second impression, 1959

In this volume will be found the record of an historic disagreement between two famous novelists. They fell out — as novelists will — about the purpose and practice of their craft. Both were gifted men, both could give extraordinary utterance to their beliefs, and their dispute inevitably attracted wide attention. It began as an amicable and private dialogue on Olympus, but its ending was not without a note of high drama, for one of the novelists lost his temper. 'Leviathan retrieving pebbles... a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea,' wrote H. G. Wells of Henry James’s elaborations of the art of fiction. To which James replied: 'It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.'