From F. R. Leavis to Robert Emmet Long, critics have argued over whether James was more a British or an American novelist. But as Edwin Sill Fussell asserts in The French Side of Henry James, this nationalistic debate has overshadowed another one, the issue of the extent to which James's work can and should be considered in the context of nineteenth-century France—its culture, its narrative fiction, even its language: "Articles on France and French in James are few and far between. Previous books on the subject ... fail adequately to get at James' French side either in depth or in detail" (x). Fussell cites as exemplary of such inadequacy Marie-Reine Garnier's Henry James e la France, Alberta Fabris' Henry James e la Francia, and Henry James: The Vision of France by Jeanne Delbaere-Garant. These books try to cover their subject too broadly and as a result only scratch the surface of the issue of the relation of James and his fiction to France and its culture, but Fussell has conveniently ignored the existence of scores of books and articles mat have treated in detail at least some aspect of this complex relationship. Philip Graver's Henry James and the French Novel, Lyall Powers's Henry James and the Naturalist Movement, William Stowe's Balzac, James, and the Realistic Novel, and Peter Brook's The Melodramatic Imagination, for example, may not be devoted to the subject of "France and French in James" precisely speaking, but they certainly are valuable contributions to the subject. These books would not have been successful if they had tried to cover exhaustively and encyclopedically the entire subject of "the French side" of Henry James; rather, their value lies in their detailed and thorough treatment of one aspect of the relationship between James's fiction and France.