For other novelists the value of Henry James s Notebooks is immense and to brood over them a major experience. The glow of the great impresario is on the pages. They are occasionally readable and endlessly stimulating often moving and are ocasionally relieved by a drop of gossip. --V. S. Pritchett New Statesman The Notebooks take us into his study and here we can observe him at last in the very act of creation at his writing table. --Leon Edel Atlantic Monthly A document of prime importance. --Edmund Wilson New Yorker