In both his time and ours, the stylistically complex novelist Henry James has served as the literary intellectual's bulwark against the crudities and the lowbrow nature of popular culture and the popular press that James came to loathe. James' views about the press were reflected in his recondite literary philosophy and his opaque writing strategies. But they also grew out of personal experience.

In 1875, the youthful James had arranged to be a correspondent on manners, people, and the arts for the New York Tribune during his travels to Europe. But his editor, Whitelaw Reid, didn't like the lengthy and discursive style of James' “letters” and wrote to him that they should be more “newsy” and written less on “topics too remote from popular interests to please more than a select few of our readers.” An offended James ended the relationship, writing back: “I am afraid I can't assent to your proposal … I know the sort of letter you mean – it is doubtless the proper sort of thing for the Tribune to have … I am too finical a writer and I should be constantly becoming more ‘literary’ than is desirable.”