Near the end of his consideration of Balzac, James voices a broader concern. I think the novel, like all art forms, goes through seasons of stasis and renewal. Criticism is rarely seen as its own art form, or as a necessary contribution to literary culture. Such engagement requires attention, description, and assessment; a critic coming to a conclusion about the merits of a work. James wrote perhaps his most famous work of criticism, “The Art of Fiction,” in 1884, in response to a lecture earlier that year by English novelist Walter Besant.