The Rise of the International Novel

The american “international novel” derives its importance as a genre from a few outstanding practitioners—from the early Howells, above all from James and Edith Wharton. To say this is of course to suggest a definition which fits novels like A Foregone Conclusion, or The Ambassadors, or Madame de Treymes, the kind of definition Professor Cargill proposed recently in an article claiming the title of “The First International Novel” for James's The American. In such novels the conflict between different sets of manners and mores, “the mixture of manners,” as James called it in the preface to “Lady Barbarina,” is essential. Usually it leads to illumination, an illumination sometimes but not always shared by the hero. That depends on his intelligence and character.