The work of a master critic writing at the peak of his powers, this magisterial book draws on speech act theory, as it originated with J. L. Austin and was further developed by Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida, to investigate the many dimensions of doing things with words in James's fiction.

J. Hillis Miller (1928-2021) was UCI Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. Among his many books are For Derrida and Literature as Conduct (both Fordham). Miller was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. He received the Modern Language Association Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award in 2005 and in 1986 was President of the MLA.