 The "late James" style was ably parodied by Max Beerbohm in "The Mote in the Middle Distance".More important for his work overall may have been his position as an expatriate, and in other ways an outsider, living in Europe.While he came from middle-class and provincial beginnings (seen from the perspective of European polite society) he worked very hard to gain access to all levels of society, and the settings of his fiction range from working class to aristocratic, and often describe the efforts of middle-class Americans to make their way in European capitals.