Professions of Taste

"Our understanding of the way Pre-Raphaelite concerns fertilized the aestheticist breeding grounds of Anglo-American modernism takes a leap forward with Freedman's Professions of Taste, an ambitiously theorized, handsomely written, and enlightening book."—Studies in English Literature "Professions of Taste is a work that Henry James might have read with pleasure. It is beautifully written, crafted in the highest spirit of critical enterprise."—American Literature "An important and innovative book. . . . Professions of Taste reopens the question of later James in a new fashion and with a new perspective. A richer geneaology of modernism, and indeed postmodernism, begins to take shape, in which both the problematics of British aestheticism and James's relations with it play an important role."—Henry James Review "This well-written study sheds much new light on the sphere of experience and expertise, 'the aesthetic,' that was created in the latter half of the nineteenth century."—Virginia Quarterly Review