In 1884, Henry James presents his essay "The Art of Fiction." Taking as a starting point the eponymous text that a lesser Victorian writer, Walter Besant, had presented a few months earlier, he summarizes the modern ways in which the novel can create the "illusion" of reality.

With the usual empirical manner that craftsmen adopt when addressing issues related to their work, he defends the protean generic constitution of the novel that allows it to tackle the "myriad forms that reality takes."

For many years, the modern novel followed the orientation that Henry James wished to give it. And for even longer, those judging a novel reproduced, whether deliberately or unknowingly, the evaluative code established by this essay.

Today's reader is called upon, if only to avoid boredom, to understand The Art of Fiction as an example of transforming a text from an individual manifesto into a general declaration of principles and, ultimately, into a cultural monument.