From our book of the year i

  

  imagine a literature
  of power without force

  

   .. as I remount the stream of composition

   I see it faintly coloured again: with the

   bright protection of the Normandy coast

   (I worked away a few weeks at Êtretat);

   with the stronger glow of southernmost

   France, breaking in during a stay at Bay-

   onne; then with the fine historic and 

   other "psychic" substance of Saint-Ger-

   main-en-Laye, a purple patch of terraced

   October before returning to Paris ..

Henry James

The American

  from the Preface to the

  New York Edition

The Art of the Novel

  Critical Prefaces

Scribner's, 1934

Preface by Colm Tóibín

University of Chicago Press, 2011©