This is a book of travel originally published in 1884. The book recounts a six-week tour James made in many towns in France. The idea of the book may be found in the first paragraph of the introduction: "We good Americans - I say it without presumption - are too apt to think that France is Paris, just as we are accused of being too apt to think that Paris is the celestial city. "

A wonderful novel by Henry James. F.R. Leavis said this is "an extremely interesting and extremely distinguished novel... remarkable in its maturity and accomplishment... has better claims to classical currency... it is more worth reading and re-reading than the greater number of Victorian fictions that are commonly offered us as classics."