Henry James takes center stage in David Lodge’s brilliant novel of literary ambition, creativity, and rivalry as revealed in James’s public career and private life. Pivoting on the dramatic first night of his play, Guy Domville, and thronged with vividly drawn characters, Author, Authorpresents a fascinating panorama of literary and theatrical life in late Victorian England. But at its heart is a portrait, rendered with remarkable empathy, of a writer who never achieved popular success in his lifetime nor resolved his sexual identity yet wrote some of the greatest novels in the English language about love.