The general consensus of the literary establishment at least up to 20 years ago is that James was far greater than Wells, I believe that is still the accepted viewpoint, although some things I have heard and seen recently make me think that Wells may be getting re-evaluated, but still not above James I believe.

That said I happen to have a great deal of literary contempt for James and think he should be completely thrown away as a worthless piece of junk - which reasons I will not expound on here. Whereas I only ever found Wells sort of boring.

OK I found James boring too, but also a conceited punk of considerably lower quality than his own opinion and the critical establishment has given for an ability to write complicated sentences about inessential things (that was not expounding on my reasons, that was just a little snide aside)