Henry James’s ‘Dear Native Land’ and the Evolution of Literary Taste

Henry James’s ‘Dear Native Land’

In his 1879 book-length study of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James quoted his admired predecessor lamenting the challenge of writing in a new literary nation. Hawthorne regretted that America, “the most powerful country in the world,” lacked a proper literary tradition, leaving writers adrift between provincial realism and European refinement.

The Correction of Taste

James viewed Hawthorne’s struggle as emblematic of American literature’s growing pains. In his essays and fiction, James repeatedly explored how a writer’s sensibility could be refined through exposure to European culture. The Atlantic crossing, both literal and spiritual, represented not exile but education—a move toward aesthetic maturity.

“It is a complex fate, being an American,” James once wrote, “and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a taste for the crude and the easy.”

In his later works, James expressed both love and frustration for his native land, describing it as “dear” but insisting on its need for a subtler artistic consciousness. For him, America’s raw vigor required the tempering influence of historical and cultural depth—the “correction of taste.”

The Banville Perspective

John Banville notes that James’s reflections on Hawthorne mirror his own lifelong negotiation between American directness and European sophistication. Banville argues that this tension fueled James’s finest achievements, where moral subtlety and stylistic precision merged.

Banville regards James not as an expatriate fleeing his birthplace, but as a critic seeking to transform it through art. The “dear native land,” as depicted in James’s prose, became a space of moral testing and aesthetic aspiration—a landscape that demanded correction yet remained endlessly dear.

“James’s America was both a muse and a problem, a subject to refine rather than escape,” Banville concludes.

The Legacy

Henry James’s meditation on taste helped define the contours of modern American writing. His insistence on nuance, perception, and form forged a model for artistic seriousness that continues to influence literature today. Through his dialogue with Hawthorne, James offered a lasting vision of how art might reconcile patriotic affection with cosmopolitan awareness.

Author summary: The essay explores Henry James’s engagement with his American heritage, portraying art as a means of refining national character and aesthetic judgment through transatlantic experience.

The New York Review of Books — 2025-11-27