Bibliography: French Poets and Novelists by James, Henry

Seibel and Cather agreed that Henry James "was a great critic, and [they] delved into all those Gallic writers of Partial Portraits and French Poets and Novelists--Balzac, Sand, Merimee, Maupassant--with occasional excursions into Dumas fils, Edouard Rod, intoxicating whiffs of Baudelaire and Richepin, deep draughts of young Rostand's ruby wine. Henry James was the guide whose hand held ours, and his critical standard was our polestar on those voyages."

In a 1899 article in the Leader, Cather writes, "Henry James regards the fact that Alfred de Musset did not visit Spain when he had the opportunity as one of the saddest proofs of his intellectual limitation, and finds de Musset's 'contented smallness of horizon' the most regrettable thing in his life."