Henry James (1843-1916) and William Dean Howells (1837-1920) are best known for the central roles they played as nineteenth-century American novelists, penning such classics as JamesGÇÖs Portrait of a Lady and HowellsGÇÖs The Rise of Silas Lapham. Their importance as literary critics, however, has been underplayed for decades. Although certain aspects of JamesGÇÖs and HowellsGÇÖs criticism have been carefully considered-JamesGÇÖs "Prefaces" and HowellsGÇÖs Criticism and Fiction, for example-no scholar has previously undertaken a comprehensive comparative study of their respective critical oeuvres. In The Master and the Dean, Rob Davidson presents the first book-length study of JamesGÇÖs literary criticism to be published since the early 1980s and the first-ever book-length study of HowellsGÇÖs criticism. Considering HowellsGÇÖs commonly accepted position among scholars as the most influential American literary critic of the period, such a study is long overdue.