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Henry James

tutorials, biography, web links, criticism, and commentary

tutorials, study guides, web links and commentary

The American

January 22, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The American first appeared as a twelve part serial in The Atlantic Monthly 1876-1877. It was then published as a single volume in May 1877. The text was extensively revised when James came to re-publish the novel as part of the 1907 New York Edition of his collected works. So the story exists in two slightly different versions – although the outcome of events is the same in both cases.

In 1888, when James entered his period of theatrical aspirations, he was persuaded to adapt the novel for the stage. In this version he both emphasised the melodramatic aspects of the story and gave it a new (happy) ending.

Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant


The American – critical commentary

America and Europe

Henry James is well know for exploring the theme of relations between Europe and America. He was born and bred in America, but was educated in Europe, and spent most of his adult life living there – eventually becoming an English citizen as an act of solidarity during the first world war.

The first (and more successful) part of the novel features what appears at first glance to be a symbolic clash between two cultures. Newman is a young, tall, and successful American who represents democratic principles, a free market economy, and a positive engagement with society in general. He is plain-spoken, honest and slightly unsophisticated, but rich enough to buy whatever he desires.

However, he is at a distinct disadvantage when confronted by the Bellegarde family and their particular form of European culture. They are cripplingly snobbish, old-fashioned, and take their adopted aristocratic principles to an almost ludicrous degree.

However, it is worth noting that their claims to medieval heritage are quasi-bogus, having been acquired via marriage. They are also keen to prop up the family finances via marriage – but they draw the line at allowing a connection with ‘commerce’.

Actually, when James was revising the novel for the New York Edition of his works in 1907, thirty years after its first appearance, he changed his mind about the Bellegarde’s motivation. He felt that rather than rejecting Newman’s money on the grounds of its origins in commerce, they would have grabbed at it. But by then it was too late for any such radical changes.

Weaknesses

The main problem with the novel is that whilst the first half is a tasteful, witty, and elegant account of Newman’s confrontation with French society and his romantic engagement with Claire de Bellegarde, the second part of the novel descends into melodrama.

There is also very little connection between the main story and the occasional sub-plot of Noemie Nioche and her father. Noemie herself is a ruthless (and successful) social climber who eventually reaches the lower rungs of the very family that rejects Newman. She is last seen in the company of Lord Deepmere when Newman visits London. But no serious parallels between the two narrative strands are ever established, although Noemie’s success can be seen as an ironic counterpart to Newman’s failure to achieve his aims.

It could also be argued that Noemie is a connecting thread in the relationship between Newman and Valentin a relationship strongly tinged with homo-erotic overtones. Newman is attracted to Noemie as a character of social interest, and Valentin is attracted to her as a lively antidote to his stifling family. But neither of their interests are as strong as the attractio they feel for each other.

There is also a character introduced half way through the novel – the reverend Benjamin Babcock – who plays no part in the story at all, and he disappears from it just as suddenly as he first appears.

James often ended his novels on a note of ambiguity or uncertain resolution (one thinks of The Bostonians or The Portrait of a Lady) but he does not rely on creaking plot devices such as a duel, a murder, and a death-bed revelation. His more successful novels have outcomes which proceed logically and develop naturally out of the realistic events they contain.


The American – study resources

The American The American – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The American The American – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The American The American – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The American The American – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The American The American – Cliff’s Notes – Amazon UK

The American The American – Kindle edition

The American The American – eBooks at Project Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

The American The Essential Henry James Collection – Kindle edition (40 works)

The American The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his tales and novels

The American The American – Notes on editions (Library of America)

Henry James Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Amarican


The American – plot summary

Christopher Newman is a successful American businessman touring Europe. He meets Noemie Nioche and her father in the Louvre, where he buys her painting and arranges to have French lessons. He then meets an old friend Tom Tristram and reveals that he is giving up business and planning to explore the best that Europe has to offer. He befriends Mrs Tristram and tells her of his desire to marry. She introduces him to the beautiful widow Claire de Bellegarde, the Countess de Cintre.

The AmericanNewman learns French from the bankrupt M.Nioche each day and commissions more pictures from Noemie so that she can create a dowry for herself. He then takes off and travels for several months, returning to Paris where Claire is under pressure from her family to marry for money for a second time. She had previously been unhappily married to an older man at the behest of her family, who coveted his pedigree and his money.

Newman revisits the family Bellegarde and despite their social reserve and snobbishness he is permitted to visit them. He is subsequently befriended by Claire’s younger brother Count Valentin, who envies Newman’s freedom to act at will. Newman reveals to him that he wants to marry his sister.

Newman proposes to Claire, who tells him she does not wish to re-marry, but asks for more time to consider his offer. He is interviewed by the Bellegarde family, who ask him about his wealth. He spars with them, stands his ground, then introduces Valentin to Noemie and M. Nioche in the Louvre.

Newman is summoned to a family dinner where they patronise and insult him, though finally granting him permission to ask Claire to marry him. From that point, Newman visits the family home regularly, despite its frigid social atmosphere. He is encouraged by the elderly English servant Mrs Bread who has served the household for forty years. She urges him.to be patient, and to take Claire away from her family,

After waiting the six months she has asked of him, Newman renews his offer of marriage, and Claire accepts him. He wishes to celebrate with a party, but the family insist on holding one first. Meanwhile, Valentin has fallen enamoured of Noemie, who has become more attractive but is a mercenary social climber.

Newman is the centre of attention at Mme de Bellegarde’s grand society ball. Lord Deepmere, a distant English cousin, passes some mysterious news to Claire and her mother.

Newman tries to persuade Valentin to accept his offer of a new commercial start in America. Valentin is on the point of doing so when he picks a quarrel with one of Noemie’s admirers at the opera and a duel is precipitated.

When Newman calls to see Claire he is suddenly told by her family that she is not allowed to marry him after all. They object to Newman because of his commercial background. He is about to follow Claire to the family’s country estate when he receives a note that Valentin has been injured.

He travels to Switzerland where the duel has taken place. Valentin is dying of a gunshot wound. Newman reluctantly tells him of the family’s perfidy, whereupon Valentin reveals that there is a skeleton somewhere in the family’s cupboard that he can use against them.

Following Valentin’s death and burial at the family’s estate near Poitiers, Newman goes to see Claire and renews his plea that they marry. She tries to explain why she cannot, then reveals that she is to become a nun, to escape from the pressures of her family.

Newman revisits Mme de Bellegarde and her elder son Urbain and appeals to them to change their minds. When they refuse, he threatens to unearth the family’s guilty secret – but they still do not yield. So Newman arranges an interview with Mrs Bread who recounts (at great length) the story of Mme de Bellegarde killing her sick husband. However, shortly before his death he has given to Mrs Bread a letter revealing the truth of his wife’s treachery. Mrs Bread gives the letter to Newman.

Newman returns to Paris, savouring his ‘thunderbolt’ of evidence, and Mrs Bread joins him as his housekeeper. He visits the Carmelite nunnery where Claire is immured, then confronts the family with his evidence. They try to bribe him, but he refuses. He then seeks to relay his news in society – choosing a Duchess who he met at the Bellegarde’s party, but he is met with a wall of polite small talk.

At Mrs Tristram’s suggestion he then retreats to London, where he bumps into Noemie Nioche with Lord Deepmere. Struggling to overcome his sense of loss and being wronged, he travels back to America, but feels alien amongst his own people – so he returns to Paris.

He visits the even more secluded nunnery to which Claire has been transferred, then feels his need for revenge on the family evaporate. He burns the incriminating letter and leaves Paris for ever.


The American – principal characters
Christopher Newman a financially successful American bachelor of 42, ex civil war
Noemie Nioche an amateur painter
M. Nioche her bankrupt father, who wears a wig
Tom Tristram a flaneur, Newman’s ex civil war friend
Mrs Elizabeth (‘Lizzie’) Tristram his plain ‘unfinished’ wife
Claire de Bellegarde Comtesse de Cintre – an upper-class divorcee of 28
Count Valentin de Bellegarde her younger brother of 25
Benjamin Babcock an American vegetarian minister
Mme de Bellegarde dowager head of the family – the daughter of an English Earl, from Wiltshire
Marquis Urbain de Bellegarde her eldest son
Marquise de Bellegarde his wife
Mrs Bread aged English retainer with 40 years service
Lord Deepmere Mme de Bellegarde’s Anglo-Irish cousin – bald, 34, missing teeth
Stanislas Kapp German admirer of Noemie who shoots Valentin in the duel

Henry James's study

Henry James’s study


Further reading

Biographical

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James, London: Macmillan, 1984.

Red button Martha Banta (ed), New Essays on The American, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, London: Macmillan, 2010.

Red button Oscar Cargill, The Novels of Henry James, New York: Macmillan, 1961.

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.


Henry James - manuscript page

a Henry James manuscript

This is an example of what’s called ‘criss cross’ writing. To save paper, and because the postal service once charged by the sheet, many people wrote their letters in two directions on the page, perpendicularly to each other. It was not unusual to use both sides of the page, and thus get four pages of writing onto one sheet of paper.

The writing is not so difficult to read as you might imagine. We are accustomed to reading English language from left to right and from top to bottom on the page. Writing going in another direction becomes like ‘wallpaper’ in the background.


Other work by Henry James

Henry James Washington SquareWashington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US


Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James web links The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

Henry James web links The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

Red button A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James web links Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

© Roy Johnson 2013


More on Henry James
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Filed Under: Henry James Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The American, The novel

The Art of Fiction – Henry James

June 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

a famous critical essay on literary theory

[Published in Longman’s Magazine 4 (September 1884), and re-printed in Partial Portraits(1888). The Art of Fiction is the essay that Robert Louis Stevenson answers in his ‘A Humble Remonstrance’, published in the next number of Longman’s Magazine (December 1884)]

NB. The paragraphs really are that long!


I SHOULD not have affixed so comprehensive a title to these few remarks, necessarily wanting in any completeness, upon a subject the full consideration of which would carry us far, did I not seem to discover a pretext for my temerity in the interesting pamphlet lately published under this name by Mr. Walter Besant. Mr. Besant’s lecture at the Royal Institution-the original form of his pamphlet-appears to indicate that many persons are interested in the art of fiction and are not indifferent to such remarks as those who practise it may attempt to make about it. I am therefore anxious not to lose the benefit of this favourable association, and to edge in a few words under cover of the attention which Mr. Besant is sure to have excited. There is something very encouraging in his having put into form certain of his ideas on the mystery of story-telling. It is a proof of life and curiosity-curiosity on the part of the brotherhood of novelists, as well as on the part of their readers. Only a short time ago it might have been supposed that the English novel was not what the French call discutable. It had no air of having a theory, a conviction, a consciousness of itself behind it-of being the expression of an artistic faith, the result of choice and comparison. I do not say it was necessarily the worse for that; it would take much more courage than I possess to intimate that the form of the novel, as Dickens and Thackeray (for instance) saw it had any taint of incompleteness. It was, however, naïf (if I may help myself out with another French word); and, evidently, if it is destined to suffer in any way for having lost its naïveté it has now an idea of making sure of the corresponding advantages During the period I have alluded to there was a comfortable, good-humoured feeling abroad that a novel is a novel, as a pudding is a pudding, and that this was the end of it. But within a year or two, for some reason or other, there have been signs of returning animation-the era of discussion would appear to have been to a certain extent opened. Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints; and there is a presumption that those times when no one has anything particular to say about it, and has no reason to give for practice or preference, though they may be times of genius, are not times of development, are times possibly even, a little, of dulness. The successful application of any art is a delightful spectacle, but the theory, too, is interesting; and though there is a great deal of the latter without the former, I suspect there has never been a genuine success that has not had a latent core of conviction. Discussion, suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they are frank and sincere. Mr. Besant has set an excellent example in saying what he thinks, for his part, about the way in which fiction should be written, as well as about the way in which it should be published; for his view of the ‘art,’ carried on into an appendix, covers that too. Other labourers in the same field will doubtless take up the argument, they will give it the light of their experience, and the effect will surely be to make our interest in the novel a little more what it had for some time threatened to fail to be a serious, active, inquiring interest, under protection of which this delightful study may, in moments of confidence, venture to say a little more what it thinks of itself. It must take itself seriously for the public to take it so. The old superstition about fiction being ‘wicked’ has doubtless died out in England; but the spirit of it lingers in a certain oblique regard directed toward any story which does not more or less admit that it is only a joke. Even the most jocular novel feels in some degree the weight of the proscription that was formerly directed against literary levity; the jocularity does not always succeed in passing for gravity. It is still expected, though perhaps people are ashamed to say it, that a production which is after all only a ‘make believe’ (for what else is a ‘story’?) shall be in some degree apologetic-shall renounce the pretension of attempting really to compete with life. This, of course, any sensible wide-awake story declines to do, for it quickly perceives that the tolerance granted to it on such a condition is only an attempt to stifle it, disguised in the form of generosity. The old Evangelical hostility to the novel, which was as explicit as it was narrow, and which regarded it as little less favourable to our immortal part than a stage-play, was in reality far less insulting. The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life. When it ceases to compete as the canvas of the painter competes, it will have arrived at a very strange pass. It is not expected of the picture that it will make itself humble in order to be forgiven; and the analogy between the art of the painter and the art of the novelist is, so far as I am able to see, complete. Their inspiration is the same, their process (allowing for the different quality of the vehicle) is the same, their success is the same. They may learn from each other, they may explain and sustain each other. Their cause is the same, and the honour of one is the honour of another. Peculiarities of manner, of execution, that correspond on either side, exist in each of them and contribute to their development. The Mahometans think a picture an unholy thing, but it is a long time since any Christian did, and it is therefore the more odd that in the Christian mind the traces (dissimulated though they may be) of a suspicion of the sister art should linger to this day. The only effectual way to lay it to rest is to emphasize the analogy to which I just alluded-to insist on the fact that as the picture is reality, so the novel is history. That is the only general description (which does it justice) that we may give the novel. But history also is allowed to compete with life, as I say; it is not, any more than painting, expected to apologize. The subject-matter of fiction is stored up likewise in documents and records, and if it will not give itself away, as they say in California, it must speak with assurance, with the tone of the historian. Certain accomplished novelists have a habit of giving themselves away which must often bring tears to the eyes of people who take their fiction seriously. I was lately struck, in reading over many pages of Anthony Trollope, with his want of discretion in this particular. In a digression, a parenthesis or an aside, he concedes to the reader that he and this trusting friend are only ‘making believe.’ He admits that the events he narrates have not really happened, and that he can give his narrative any turn the reader may like best. Such a betrayal of a sacred office seems to me, I confess, a terrible crime; it is what I mean by the attitude of apology, and it shocks me every whit as much in Trollope as it would have shocked me in Gibbon or Macaulay. It implies that the novelist is less occupied in looking for the truth than the historian, and in doing so it deprives him at a stroke of all his standing-room. To represent and illustrate the past, the actions of men, is the task of either writer, and the only difference that I can see is, in proportion as he succeeds, to the honour of the novelist, consisting as it does in his having more difficulty in collecting his evidence, which is so far from being purely literary. It seems to me to give him a great character, the fact that he has at once so much in common with the philosopher and the painter; this double analogy is a magnificent heritage. It is of all this evidently that Mr. Besant is full when he insists upon the fact that fiction is one of the fine arts, deserving in its turn of all the honours and emoluments that have hitherto been reserved for the successful profession of music, poetry, painting, architecture. It is impossible to insist too much on so important a truth, and the place that Mr. Besant demands for the work of the novelist may be represented, a trifle less abstractly, by saying that he demands not only that it shall be reputed artistic, but that it shall be reputed very artistic indeed. It is excellent that he should have struck this note, for his doing so indicates that there was need of it, that his proposition may be to many people a novelty. One rubs one’s eyes at the thought; but the rest of Mr. Besant’s essay confirms the revelation. I suspect, in truth, that it would be possible to confirm it still further, and that one would not be far wrong in saying that in addition to the people to whom it has never occurred that a novel ought to be artistic, there are a great many others who, if this principle were urged upon them, would be filled with an indefinable mistrust. They would find it difficult to explain their repugnance, but it would operate strongly to put them on their guard. ‘Art,’ in our Protestant communities, where so many things have got so strangely twisted about, is supposed, in certain circles, to have some vaguely injurious effect upon those who make it an important consideration, who let it weigh in the balance. It is assumed to be opposed in some mysterious manner to morality, to amusement, to instruction. When it is embodied in the work of the painter (the sculptor is another affair!) you know what it is; it stands there before you, in the honesty of pink and green and a gilt frame; you can see the worst of it at a glance, and you can be on your guard. But when it is introduced into literature it becomes more insidious-there is danger of its hurting you before you know it. Literature should be either instructive or amusing, and there is in many minds an impression that these artistic preoccupations, the search for form, contribute to neither end, interfere indeed with both. They are too frivolous to be edifying, and too serious to be diverting; and they are, moreover, priggish and paradoxical and superfluous. That, I think, represents the manner in which the latent thought of many people who read novels as an exercise in skipping would explain itself if it were to become articulate. They would argue, of course, that a novel ought to be ‘good,’ but they would interpret this term in a fashion of their own, which, indeed, would vary considerably from one critic to another. One would say that being good means representing virtuous and aspiring characters, placed in prominent positions; another would say that it depends for a ‘happy ending’ on a distribution at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives, babies, millions, appended paragraphs and cheerful remarks. Another still would say that it means being full of incident and movement, so that we shall wish to jump ahead, to see who was the mysterious stranger, and if the stolen will was ever found, and shall not be distracted from this pleasure by any tiresome analysis or ‘description.’ But they would all agree that the ‘artistic’ idea would spoil some of their fun. One would hold it accountable for all the description, another would see it revealed in the absence of sympathy. Its hostility to a happy ending would be evident, and it might even, in some cases, render any ending at all impossible. The ‘ending’ of a novel is, for many persons, like that of a good dinner, a course of dessert and ices, and the artist in fiction is regarded as a sort of meddlesome doctor who forbids agreeable aftertastes. It is therefore true that this conception of Mr. Besant’s, of the novel as a superior form, encounters not only a negative but a positive indifference. It matters little that, as a work of art, it should really be as little or as much concerned to supply happy endings, sympathetic characters, and an objective tone, as if it were a work of mechanics; the association of ideas, however incongruous, might easily be too much for it if an eloquent voice were not sometimes raised to call attention to the fact that it is at once as free and as serious a branch of literature as any other. Certainly, this might sometimes be doubted in presence of the enormous number of works of fiction that appeal to the credulity of our generation, for it might easily seem that there could be no great substance in a commodity so quickly and easily produced. It must be admitted that good novels are somewhat compromised by bad ones, and that the field, at large, suffers discredit from overcrowding. I think, however, that this injury is only superficial, and that the superabundance of written fiction proves nothing against the principle itself. It has been vulgarised, like all other kinds of literature, like everything else, to-day, and it has proved more than some kinds accessible to vulgarisation. But there is as much difference as there ever was between a good novel and a bad one: the bad is swept, with all the daubed canvases and spoiled marble, into some unvisited limbo or infinite rubbish-yard, beneath the back-windows of the world, and the good subsists and emits its light and stimulates our desire for perfection. As I shall take the liberty of making but a single criticism of Mr. Besant, whose tone is so full of the love of his art, I may as well have done with it at once. He seems to me to mistake in attempting to say so definitely beforehand what sort of an affair the good novel will be. To indicate the danger of such an error as that has been the purpose of these few pages; to suggest that certain traditions on the subject, applied a priori, have already had much to answer for, and that the good health of an art which undertakes so immediately to reproduce life must demand that it be perfectly free. It lives upon exercise, and the very meaning of exercise is freedom. The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. That general responsibility rests upon it, but it is the only one I can think of. The ways in which it is at liberty to accomplish this result (of interesting us) strike me as innumerable and such as can only suffer from being marked out, or fenced in, by prescription. They are as various as the temperament of man, and they are successful in proportion as they reveal a particular mind, different from others. A novel is in its broadest definition a personal impression of life; that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression. But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say. The tracing of a line to be followed, of a tone to be taken, of a form to be filled out, is a limitation of that freedom and a suppression of the very thing that we are most curious about. The form, it seems to me, is to be appreciated after the fact; then the author’s choice has been made, his standard has been indicated; then we can follow lines and directions and compare tones. Then, in a word, we can enjoy one of the most charming of pleasures, we can estimate quality, we can apply the test of execution. The execution belongs to the author alone; it is what is most personal to him, and we measure him by that. The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant – no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes. Here it is especially that he works, step by step, like his brother of the brush, of whom we may always say that he has painted his picture in a manner best known to himself. His manner is his secret, not necessarily a deliberate one. He cannot disclose it, as a general thing, if he would; he would be at a loss to teach it to others. I say this with a due recollection of having insisted on the community of method of the artist who paints a picture and the artist who writes a novel. The painter is able to teach the rudiments of his practice, and it is possible, from the study of good work (granted the aptitude), both to learn how to paint and to learn how to write. Yet it remains true, without injury to the rapprochement, that the literary artist would be obliged to say to his pupil much more than the other, ‘Ah, well, you must do it as you can !’ It is a question of degree, a matter of delicacy. If there are exact sciences there are also exact arts, and the grammar of painting is so much more definite that it makes the difference. I ought to add, however, that if Mr. Besant says at the beginning of his essay that the ‘laws of fiction may be laid down and taught with as much precision and exactness as the laws of harmony, perspective, and proportion,’ he mitigates what might appear to be an over-statement by applying his remark to ‘general’ laws, and by expressing most of these rules in a manner with which it would certainly be unaccommodating to disagree. That the novelist must write from his experience, that his ‘characters must be real and such as might be met with in actual life;’ that ‘a young lady brought up in a quiet country village should avoid descriptions of garrison life,’ and ‘a writer whose friends and personal experiences belong to the lower middle-class should carefully avoid introducing his characters into Society;’ that one should enter one’s notes in a common-place book; that one’s figures should be clear in outline; that making them clear by some trick of speech or of carriage is a bad method, and ‘describing them at length’ is a worse one; that English Fiction should have a ‘conscious moral purpose;’ that ‘it is almost impossible to estimate too highly the value of careful workmanship-that is, of style;’ that ‘the most important point of all is the story,’ that ‘the story is everything’-these are principles with most of which it is surely impossible not to sympathise. That remark about the lower middle-class writer and his knowing his place is perhaps rather chilling; but for the rest, I should find it difficult to dissent from any one of these recommendations. At the same time I should find it difficult positively to assent to them, with the exception, perhaps, of the injunction as to entering one’s notes in a common-place book. They scarcely seem to me to have the quality that Mr. Besant attributes to the rules of the novelist-the ‘precision and exactness’ of ‘the laws of harmony, perspective, and proportion.’ They are suggestive, they are even inspiring, but they are not exact, though they are doubtless as much so as the case admits of; which is a proof of that liberty of interpretation for which I just contended. For the value of these different injunctions-so beautiful and so vague-is wholly in the meaning one attaches to them. The characters, the situation, which strike one as real will be those that touch and interest one most, but the measure of reality is very difficult to fix. The reality of Don Quixote or of Mr. Micawber is a very delicate shade; it is a reality so coloured by the author’s vision that, vivid as it may be, one would hesitate to propose it as a model; one would expose one’s self to some very embarrassing questions on the part of a pupil. It goes without saying that you will not write a good novel unless you possess the sense of reality; but it will be difficult to give you a recipe for calling that sense into being. Humanity is immense and reality has a myriad forms; the most one can affirm is that some of the flowers of fiction have the odour of it, and others have not; as for telling you in advance how your nosegay should be composed, that is another affair. It is equally excellent and inconclusive to say that one must write from experience; to our supposititious aspirant such a declaration might savour of mockery. What kind of experience is intended, and where does it begin and end? Experience is never limited and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative much more when it happens to be that of a man of genius-it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations. The young lady living in a village has only to be a damsel upon whom nothing is lost to make it quite unfair (as it seems to me) to declare to her that she shall have nothing to say about the military. Greater miracles have been seen than that, imagination assisting, she should speak the truth about some of these gentlemen. I remember an English novelist, a woman of genius, telling me that she was much commended for the impression she had managed to give in one of her tales of the nature and way of life of the French Protestant youth. She had been asked where she learned so much about this recondite being, she had been congratulated on her peculiar opportunities. These opportunities consisted in her having once, in Paris, as she ascended a staircase, passed an open door where, in the household of a pasteur, some of the young Protestants were seated at table round a finished meal. The glimpse made a picture; it lasted only a moment, but that moment was experience. She had got her impression, and she evolved her type. She knew what youth was, and what Protestantism; she also had the advantage of having seen what it was to be French; so that she converted these ideas into a concrete image and produced a reality. Above all, however, she was blessed with the faculty which when you give it an inch takes an ell, and which for the artist is a much greater source of strength than any accident of residence or of place in the social scale. The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it-this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, ‘Write from experience, and experience only,’ I should feel that this was a rather tantalising monition if I were not careful immediately to add, ‘Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!’ I am far from intending by this to minimise the importance of exactness-of truth of detail. One can speak best from one’s own taste, and I may therefore venture to say that the air of reality (solidity of specification) seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel-the merit on which all its other merits (including that conscious moral purpose of which Mr. Besant speaks) helplessly and submissively depend. If it be not there, they are all as nothing, and if these be there, they owe their effect to the success with which the author has produced the illusion of life. The cultivation of this success, the study of this exquisite process, form, to my taste, the beginning and the end of the art of the novelist. They are his inspiration, his despair, his reward, his torment, his delight. It is here, in very truth, that he competes with life; it is here that he competes with his brother the painter, in his attempt to render the look of things, the look that conveys their meaning, to catch the colour, the relief, the expression, the surface, the substance of the human spectacle. It is in regard to this that Mr. Besant is well inspired when he bids him take notes. He cannot possibly take too many, he cannot possibly take enough. All life solicits him, and to ‘render’ the simplest surface, to produce the most momentary illusion, is a very complicated business. His case would be easier, and the rule would be more exact, if Mr. Besant had been able to tell him what notes to take. But this I fear he can never learn in any hand-book; it is the business of his life. He has to take a great many in order to select a few, he has to work them up as he can, and even the guides and philosophers who might have most to say to him must leave him alone when it comes to the application of precepts, as we leave the painter in communion with his palette. That his characters ‘must be clear in outline,’ as Mr. Besant says-he feels that down to his boots; but how he shall make them so is a secret between his good angel and himself. It would be absurdly simple if he could be taught that a great deal of ‘description’ would make them so, or that, on the contrary, the absence of description and the cultivation of dialogue, or the absence of dialogue and the multiplication of ‘incident,’ would rescue him from his difficulties. Nothing, for instance, is more possible than that he be of a turn of mind for which this odd, literal opposition of description and dialogue, incident and description, has little meaning and light. People often talk of these things as if they had a kind of internecine distinctness, instead of melting into each other at every breath and being intimately associated parts of one general effort of expression. I cannot imagine composition existing in a series of blocks, nor conceive, in any novel worth discussing at all, of a passage of description that is not in its intention narrative, a passage of dialogue that is not in its intention descriptive, a touch of truth of any sort that does not partake of the nature of incident, and an incident that derives its interest from any other source than the general and only source of the success of a work of art-that of being illustrative. A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like every other organism, and in proportion as it lives will it be found, I think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts. The critic who over the close texture of a finished work will pretend to trace a geography of items will mark some frontiers as artificial, I fear, as any that have been known to history. There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, which must have cost many a smile to the intending romancer who was keen about his work. It appears to me as little to the point as the equally celebrated distinction between the novel and the romance- to answer as little to any reality. There are bad novels and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning, and I can as little imagine speaking of a novel of character as I can imagine speaking of a picture of character. When one says picture, one says of character, when one says novel, one says of incident, and the terms may be transposed. What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? What is a picture or a novel that is not of character? What else do we seek in it and find in it? It is an incident for a woman to stand up with her hand resting on a table and look out at you in a certain way; or if it be not an incident, I think it will be hard to say what it is. At the same time it is an expression of character. If you say you don’t see it (character in that–allons donc!) this is exactly what the artist who has reasons of his own for thinking he does see it undertakes to show you. When a young man makes up his mind that he has not faith enough, after all, to enter the Church, as he intended, that is an incident, though you may not hurry to the end of the chapter to see whether perhaps he doesn’t change once more. I do not say that these are extraordinary or startling incidents. I do not pretend to estimate the degree of interest proceeding from them, for this will depend upon the skill of the painter. It sounds almost puerile to say that some incidents are intrinsically much more important than others, and I need not take this precaution after having professed my sympathy for the major ones in remarking that the only classification of the novel that I can understand is into the interesting and the uninteresting.

The novel and the romance, the novel of incident and that of character-these separations appear to me to have been made by critics and readers for their own convenience, and to help them out of some of their difficulties, but to have little reality or interest for the producer, from whose point of view it is, of course, that we are attempting to consider the art of fiction. The case is the same with another shadowy category, which Mr. Besant apparently is disposed to set up-that of the ‘modern English novel;’ unless, indeed, it be that in this matter he has fallen into an accidental confusion of standpoints. It is not quite clear whether he intends the remarks in which he alludes to it to be didactic or historical. It is as difficult to suppose a person intending to write a modern English, as to suppose him writing an ancient English, novel; that is a label which begs the question. One writes the novel, one paints the picture, of one’s language and of one’s time, and calling it modern English will not, alas ! make the difficult task any easier. No more, unfortunately, will calling this or that work of one’s fellow artist a romance-unless it be, of course, simply for the pleasantness of the thing, as, for instance, when Hawthorne gave this heading to his story of Blithedale. The French, who have brought the theory of fiction to remarkable completeness, have but one word for the novel, and have not attempted smaller things in it, that I can see, for that. I can think of no obligation to which the ‘romancer’ would not be held equally with the novelist; the standard of execution is equally high for each. Of course it is of execution that we are talking-that being the only point of a novel that is open to contention. This is perhaps too often lost sight of, only to produce interminable confusions and cross-purposes. We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnée; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it. Naturally I do not mean that we are bound to like it or find it interesting: in case we do not our course is perfectly simple-to let it alone. We may believe that of a certain idea even the most sincere novelist can make nothing at all, and the event may perfectly justify our belief; but the failure will have been a failure to execute, and it is in the execution that the fatal weakness is recorded. If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions, and some of the most interesting experiments of which it is capable are hidden in the bosom of common things. Gustave Flaubert has written a story about the devotion of a servant-girl to a parrot, and the production, highly finished as it is, cannot on the whole be called a success. We are perfectly free to find it flat, but I think it might have been interesting; and I, for my part, am extremely glad he should have written it; it is a contribution to our knowledge of what can be done or what cannot. Ivan Turgénieff has written a tale about a deaf and dumb serf and a lap-dog, and the thing is touching, loving, a little masterpiece. He struck the note of life where Gustave Flaubert missed it-he flew in the face of a presumption and achieved a victory. Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of ‘liking’ a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test. I mention this to guard myself from the accusation of intimating that the idea, the subject, of a novel or a picture, does not matter. It matters, to my sense, in the highest degree, and if I might put up a prayer it would be that artists should select none but the richest. Some, as I have already hastened to admit, are much more substantial than others , and it would be a happily arranged world in which persons intending to treat them should be exempt from confusions and mistakes. This fortunate condition will arrive only, I fear, on the same day that critics become purged from error. Meanwhile, I repeat, we do not judge the artist with fairness unless we say to him, ‘Oh, I grant you your starting point, because if I did not I should seem to prescribe to you, and heaven forbid I should take that responsibility. If I pretend to tell you what you must not take, you will call upon me to tell you then what you must take; in which case I shall be nicely caught! Moreover, it isn’t till I have accepted your data that I can begin to measure you. I have the standard; I judge you by what you propose, and you must look out for me there. Of course I may not care for your idea at all; I may think it silly, or stale, or unclean; in which case I wash my hands of you altogether. I may content myself with believing that you will not have succeeded in being interesting, but I shall of course not attempt to demonstrate it, and you will be as indifferent to me as I am to you. I needn’t remind you that there are all sorts of tastes: who can know it better? Some people, for excellent reasons, don’t like to read about carpenters; others, for reasons even better, don’t like to read about courtesans. Many object to Americans. Others (I believe they are mainly editors and publishers) won’t look at Italians. Some readers don’t like quiet subjects; others don’t like bustling ones. Some enjoy a complete illusion; others revel in a complete deception. They choose their novels accordingly, and if they don’t care about your idea they won’t, a fortiori, care about your treatment.’

So that it comes back very quickly, as I have said, to the liking; in spite of M. Zola, who reasons less powerfully than he represents, and who will not reconcile himself to this absoluteness of taste, thinking that there are certain things that people ought to like, and that they can be made to like. I am quite at a loss to imagine anything (at any rate in this matter of fiction) that people ought to like or to dislike. Selection will be sure to take care of itself, for it has a constant motive behind it. That motive is simply experience. As people feel life, so they will feel the art that is most closely related to it. This closeness of relation is what we should never forget in talking of the effort of the novel. Many people speak of it as a factitious, artificial form, a product of ingenuity, the business of which is to alter and arrange the things that surround us, to translate them into conventional, traditional moulds. This, however, is a view of the matter which carries us but a very short way, condemns the art to an eternal repetition of a few familiar clichés, cuts short its development, and leads us straight up to a dead wall. Catching the very note and trick, the strange irregular rhythm of life, that is the attempt whose strenuous force keeps Fiction upon her feet. In proportion as in what she offers us we see life without rearrangement do we feel that we are touching the truth; in proportion as we see it with rearrangement do we feel that we are being put off with a substitute, a compromise and convention. It is not uncommon to hear an extraordinary assurance of remark in regard to this matter of rearranging, which is often spoken of as if it were the last word of art. Mr. Besant seems to me in danger of falling into this great error with his rather unguarded talk about ‘selection.’ Art is essentially selection, but it is a selection whose main care is to be typical, to be inclusive. For many people art means rose-coloured windows, and selection means picking a bouquet for Mrs. Grundy. They will tell you glibly that artistic considerations have nothing to do with the disagreeable, with the ugly; they will rattle off shallow commonplaces about the province of art and the limits of art, till you are moved to some wonder in return as to the province and the limits of ignorance. It appears to me that no one can ever have made a seriously artistic attempt without becoming conscious of an immense increase-a kind of revelation-of freedom. One perceives, in that case-by the light of a heavenly ray-that the province of art is all life, all feeling, all observation, all vision. As Mr. Besant so justly intimates, it is all experience. That is a sufficient answer to those who maintain that it must not touch the painful, who stick into its divine unconscious bosom little prohibitory inscriptions on the end of sticks, such as we see in public gardens-‘It is forbidden to walk on the grass; it is forbidden to touch the flowers; it is not allowed to introduce dogs, or to remain after dark; it is requested to keep to the right.’ The young aspirant in the line of fiction, whom we continue to imagine, will do nothing without taste, for in that case his freedom would be of little use to him; but the first advantage of his taste will be to reveal to him the absurdity of the little sticks and tickets. If he have taste, I must add, of course he will have ingenuity, and my disrespectful reference to that quality just now was not meant to imply that it is useless in fiction. But it is only a secondary aid; the first is a vivid sense of reality.

Mr. Besant has some remarks on the question of ‘the story,’ which I shall not attempt to criticise, though they seem to me to contain a singular ambiguity, because I do not think I understand them. I cannot see what is meant by talking as if there were a part of a novel which is the story and part of it which for mystical reasons is not-unless indeed the distinction be made in a sense in which it is difficult to suppose that anyone should attempt to convey anything. ‘The story,’ if it represents anything, represents the subject, the idea, the data of the novel; and there is surely no ‘school’-Mr. Besant speaks of a school- which urges that a novel should be all treatment and no subject. There must assuredly be something to treat; every school is intimately conscious of that. This sense of the story being the idea, the starting-point, of the novel is the only one that I see in which it can be spoken of as something different from its organic whole; and since, in proportion as the work is successful, the idea permeates and penetrates it, informs and animates it, so that every word and every punctuation-point contribute directly to the expression, in that proportion do we lose our sense of the story being a blade which may be drawn more or less out of its sheath. The story and the novel, the idea and the form, are the needle and thread, and I never heard of a guild of tailors who recommended the use of the thread without the needle or the needle without the thread. Mr. Besant is not the only critic who may be observed to have spoken as if there were certain things in life which constitute stories and certain others which do not. I find the same odd implication in an entertaining article in the Pall Mall Gazette, devoted, as it happens, to Mr. Besant’s lecture. ‘The story is the thing!’ says this graceful writer, as if with a tone of opposition to another idea. I should think it was, as every painter who, as the time for ‘sending in’ his picture looms in the distance, finds himself still in quest of a subject-as every belated artist, not fixed about his donnée, will heartily agree. There are some subjects which speak to us and others which do not, but he would be a clever man who should undertake to give a rule by which the story and the no-story should be known apart. It is impossible (to me at least) to imagine any such rule which shall not be altogether arbitrary. The writer in the Pall Mall opposes the delightful (as I suppose) novel of Margot la Balafrée to certain tales in which ‘Bostonian nymphs’ appear to have ‘rejected English dukes for psychological reasons.’ I am not acquainted with the romance just designated, and can scarcely forgive the Pall Mall critic for not mentioning the name of the author, but the title appears to refer to a lady who may have received a scar in some heroic adventure. I am inconsolable at not being acquainted with this episode, but am utterly at a loss to see why it is a story when the rejection (or acceptance) of a duke is not, and why a reason, psychological or other, is not a subject when a cicatrix is. They are all particles of the multitudinous life with which the novel deals, and surely no dogma which pretends to make it lawful to touch the one and unlawful to touch the other will stand for a moment on its feet. It is the special picture that must stand or fall, according as it seems to possess truth or to lack it. Mr. Besant does not, to my sense, light up the subject by intimating that a story must, under penalty of not being a story, consist of ‘adventures.’ Why of adventures more than of green spectacles? He mentions a category of impossible things, and among them he places ‘fiction without adventure.’ Why without adventure, more than without matrimony, or celibacy, or parturition, or cholera, or hydropathy, or Jansenism? This seems to me to bring the novel back to the hapless little rôle of being an artificial, ingenious thing-bring it down from its large, free character of an immense and exquisite correspondence with life. And what is adventure, when it comes to that, and by what sign is the listening pupil to recognise it? It is an adventure-an immense one-for me to write this little article; and for a Bostonian nymph to reject an English duke is an adventure only less stirring, I should say, than for an English duke to be rejected by a Bostonian nymph. I see dramas within dramas in that, and innumerable points of view. A psychological reason is, to my imagination, an object adorably pictorial; to catch the tint of its complexion-I feel as if that idea might inspire one to Titianesque efforts. There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason, and yet, I protest, the novel seems to me the most magnificent form of art. I have just been reading, at the same time, the delightful story of Treasure Island, by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, and the last tale from M. Edmond de Goncourt, which is entitled Chérie. One of these works treats of murders, mysteries, islands of dreadful renown, hairbreadth escapes, miraculous coincidences and buried doubloons. The other treats of a little French girl who lived in a fine house in Paris and died of wounded sensibility because no one would marry her. I call Treasure Island delightful, because it appears to me to have succeeded wonderfully in what it attempts; and I venture to bestow no epithet upon Chérie which strikes me as having failed in what it attempts-that is, in tracing the development of the moral consciousness of a child. But one of these productions strikes me as exactly as much of a novel as the other, and as having a ‘story’ quite as much. The moral consciousness of a child is as much a part of life as the islands of the Spanish Main, and the one sort of geography seems to me to have those ‘surprises’ of which Mr. Besant speaks quite as much as the other. For myself (since it comes back in the last resort, as I say, to the preference of the individual), the picture of the child’s experience has the advantage that I can at successive steps (an immense luxury, near to the ‘sensual pleasure’ of which Mr. Besant’s critic in the Pall Mall speaks) say Yes or No, as it may be, to what the artist puts before me. I have been a child, but I have never been on a quest for a buried treasure, and it is a simple accident that with M. de Goncourt I should have for the most part to say No. With George Eliot, when she painted that country, I always said Yes.

The most interesting part of Mr. Besant’s lecture is unfortunately the briefest passage-his very cursory allusion to the ‘conscious moral purpose’ of the novel. Here again it is not very clear whether he is recording a fact or laying down a principle; it is a great pity that in the latter case he should not have developed his idea. This branch of the subject is of immense importance, and Mr. Besant’s few words point to considerations of the widest reach, not to be lightly disposed of. He will have treated the art of fiction but superficially who is not prepared to go every inch of the way that these considerations will carry him. It is for this reason that at the beginning of these remarks I was careful to notify the reader that my reflections on so large a theme have no pretension to be exhaustive. Like Mr. Besant, I have left the question of the morality of the novel till the last, and at the last I find I have used up my space. It is a question surrounded with difficulties, as witness the very first that meets us, in the form of a definite question, on the threshold. Vagueness, in such a discussion, is fatal, and what is the meaning of your morality and your conscious moral purpose? Will you not define your terms and explain how (a novel being a picture) a picture can be either moral or immoral? You wish to paint a moral picture or carve a moral statue; will you not tell us how you would set about it? We are discussing the Art of Fiction; questions of art are questions (in the widest sense) of execution; questions of morality are quite another affair, and will you not let us see how it is that you find it so easy to mix them up? These things are so clear to Mr. Besant that he has deduced from them a law which he sees embodied in English Fiction and which is ‘a truly admirable thing and a great cause for congratulation.’ It is a great cause for congratulation, indeed, when such thorny problems become as smooth as silk. I may add that, in so far as Mr. Besant perceives that in point of fact English Fiction has addressed itself preponderantly to these delicate questions, he will appear to many people to have made a vain discovery. They will have been positively struck, on the contrary, with the moral timidity of the usual English novelist; with his (or with her) aversion to face the difficulties with which, on every side, the treatment of reality bristles. He is apt to be extremely shy (whereas the picture that Mr. Besant draws is a picture of boldness), and the sign of his work, for the most part, is a cautious silence on certain subjects. In the English novel (by which I mean the American as well), more than in any other, there is a traditional difference between that which people know and that which they agree to admit that they know, that which they see and that which they speak of, that which they feel to be a part of life and that which they allow to enter into literature. There is the great difference, in short, between what they talk of in conversation and what they talk of in print. The essence of moral energy is to survey the whole field, and I should directly reverse Mr. Besant’s remark, and say not that the English novel has a purpose, but that it has a diffidence. To what degree a purpose in a work of art is a source of corruption I shall not attempt to inquire; the one that seems to me least dangerous is the purpose of making a perfect work. As for our novel, I may say, lastly, on this score, that, as we find it in England to-day, it strikes me as addressed in a large degree to ‘young people,’ and that this in itself constitutes a presumption that it will be rather shy. There are certain things which it is generally agreed not to discuss, not even to mention, before young people. That is very well, but the absence of discussion is not a symptom of the moral passion. The purpose of the English novel-‘a truly admirable thing, and a great cause for congratulation’-strikes me, therefore, as rather negative.

There is one point at which the moral sense and the artistic sense lie very near together; that is, in the light of the very obvious truth that the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer. In proportion as that mind is rich and noble will the novel, the picture, the statue, partake of the substance of beauty and truth. To be constituted of such elements is, to my vision, to have purpose enough. No good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind; that seems to me an axiom which, for the artist in fiction, will cover all needful moral ground; if the youthful aspirant take it to heart it will illuminate for him many of the mysteries of ‘purpose.’ There are many other useful things that might be said to him, but I have come to the end of my article, and can only touch them as I pass. The critic in the Pall Mall Gazette, whom I have already quoted, draws attention to the danger, in speaking of the art of fiction, of generalizing. The danger that he has in mind is rather, I imagine, that of particularizing, for there are some comprehensive remarks which, in addition to those embodied in Mr. Besant’s suggestive lecture, might, without fear of misleading him, be addressed to the ingenuous student. I should remind him first of the magnificence of the form that is open to him, which offers to sight so few restrictions and such innumerable opportunities. The other arts, in comparison, appear confined and hampered; the various conditions under which they are exercised are so rigid and definite. But the only condition that I can think of attaching to the composition of the novel is, as I have already said, that it be interesting. This freedom is a splendid privilege, and the first lesson of the young novelist is to learn to be worthy of it. ‘Enjoy it as it deserves,’ I should say to him; ‘take possession of it, explore it to its utmost extent, reveal it, rejoice in it. All life belongs to you, and don’t listen either to those who would shut you up into corners of it and tell you that it is only here and there that art inhabits, or to those who would persuade you that this heavenly messenger wings her way outside of life altogether, breathing a superfine air and turning away her head from the truth of things. There is no impression of life, no manner of seeing it and feeling it, to which the plan of the novelist may not offer a place; you have only to remember that talents so dissimilar as those of Alexandre Dumas and Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Gustave Flaubert, have worked in this field with equal glory. Don’t think too much about optimism and pessimism; try and catch the colour of life itself. In France to-day we see a prodigious effort (that of Emile Zola, to whose solid and serious work no explorer of the capacity of the novel can allude without respect), we see an extraordinary effort vitiated by a spirit of pessimism on a narrow basis. M. Zola is magnificent, but he strikes an English reader as ignorant; he has an air of working in the dark; if he had as much light as energy his results would be of the highest value. As for the aberrations of a shallow optimism, the ground (of English fiction especially) is strewn with their brittle particles as with broken glass. If you must indulge in conclusions let them have the taste of a wide knowledge. Remember that your first duty is to be as complete as possible-to make as perfect a work. Be generous and delicate, and then, in the vulgar phrase, go in!’


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Filed Under: 19C Literature, Henry James Tagged With: 19C Literature, English literature, Henry James, The Art of Fiction, The novel, Theory

The Aspern Papers

August 29, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Aspern Papers (1888) comes in the middle years of Henry James’s development as a writer. Disappointed by the reception of his recent novels The Bostonians and The Princess Cassamassima, he intensified his exploration of the long story, the ‘tale’, and the novella. He was also exploring the relationship between authors, readers, and literary reputations. The story first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and was then published in book form later the same year.

The Aspern Papers

Venice – St Mark’s Square


The Aspern Papers – critical commentary

The Novella

Henry James described The Aspern Papers as a ‘tale’ – but then he used that term for most of his fiction which was not obviously in the novel genre. It seems to me that this piece of work qualifies as a novella by the normal criteria for distinguishing between the novella and the long short story – and the short novel for that matter.

Unity of place

The whole of the drama takes place in one location – Venice. The narrator is already there when the story begins. The first pages are used to say how he got there, and the suppositions upon which his quest is based. In fact the location is further concentrated by the fact that he goes to lodge in the same palazzo as the two other principal characters – Juliana Bordereau and her niece Miss Tina.

Much of the drama takes place in this one building, with the principals spying on each other and conducting their occasional conversations in the garden that the narrator has used as the pretence for his being there. Following the midnight debacle in Juliana’s room, he leaves the location for twelve days, but returns to the original scene for the denouement.

Unity of character

There are only three important figures in the drama, and they are all living in the same building. Juliana is intent on protecting her privacy against the narrator’s intrusiveness, and extracting maximum pecuniary advantage from him in terms of rent. She does this by making herself absent, which causes him maximum frustration. The narrator has his single-minded quest for the ‘papers’, and wishes to deceive Juliana and Miss Tina, who herself has a slender hope of ensnaring the Narrator out of some native sense of survival.

There is also tension between the two women. Juliana seems to have prematurely imprisoned Miss Tina in her Venetian seclusion. Tina certainly does everything within her limited powers to clutch at the Narrator as a possible saviour. And Juliana wishes to put Miss Tina forward to the Narrator, in order to extract an exorbitant rent from him which will go towards Tina’s dowry.

Unity of action

In temporal terms the action is spread over a number of months – but it is unified in the sense that nothing else is introduced to dilute its dramatic effect. The drama is concentrated upon the interlocked issues of the Narrator’s desire for the papers, Juliana Bordereau’s double strategy of thwarting his plans whilst extracting money from him, and Miss Tina’s plight as a pawn in the struggle between them.

Unity of atmosphere

The topographical ‘atmosphere’ is provided by occasional descriptions of Venice (the canals, the old houses) – but it is the psychological atmosphere which is more important. This is generated by two principal factors. The first is the tension which exists between the Narrator’s desire to locate the ‘papers’ and Juliana’s stubborn refusal to co-operate, which thwarts his ambition.

The second is the tension created by the Narrator’s naive account of events. He obviously doesn’t fully comprehend what is happening, and he is unable to see his own crass and blundering behaviour, even though he is recounting it. The reader therefore is offered what the critic Wayne Booth called the pleasure of ‘collaboration with the author’.


The Aspern Papers – themes

Privacy and Revelation

The Narrator is a critic and biographer whose work is to delve into the private life of his subject and reveal to the world whatever discoveries he thinks important. But the papers he seeks are private communications between Aspern and Juliana Bordereau, which might contain information she does not wish to reveal – either about herself or Aspern. The Narrator is dramatically intrusive into the situation he finds in Venice.

Juliana aand Tina Bordereau are very private people who have lived in seclusion and isolation for many years, and it is very obvious that Juliana is hostile to the Narrator’s intrusion – even though she wishes to profit from it. Miss Tina is habituated to solitude, but it seems that she may welcome a release from the situation in which she finds herself.

The Narrator violates their privacy by proposing himself as their lodger, and he then procedes to spy on them in his attempt to locate the papers. He conceals his intention, lies to them about his reasons for being there, and even invents a false identity for himself. However, the two women in their turn spy on him in order to uncover his true motives and intentions.

Juliana Bordereau maximises her sense of privacy by avoiding all contact with the outside world. She bandages her eyes and wears a green eye shield – which is very significantly removed on the occasion of her catching out the Narrator as he attempts to pry into her room at night.

Fear of marriage

This is one of many Henry James stories which features a bachelor, often middle-aged, threatened by the prospect of single women with marriage in mind. In this case Juliana Bordereau actively promotes her niece as a lure to the Narrator, and Miss Tina herself tempts him with access to the papers if he were to become ‘a relation’.

But the Narrator’s account of Miss Tina should leave us in no doubt what his response will be. He consistently describes her in misogynistic terms as frowzy and unappealing, a prematurely aged drab – except when he changes his mind and decides to accept her proposal. Then she becomes ‘younger; she was not a ridiculous old woman’. But when she rejects him she immediately becomes ‘a plain dingy elderly person’ again.

In other words, his narrative objectivity is not something we as readers can rely upon, and we have yet another example of James exploring a theme which pervaded the latter part of his life – to marry or not? – a question whose psychological significance he did not seem to recognise in himself but which he dramatised in many of his works.

The Aspern Papers


The Aspern Papers – study resources

The Aspern Papers The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Aspern Papers The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

The Aspern Papers Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Aspern Papers Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Aspern Papers The Aspern Papers – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Aspern Papers The Aspern Papers – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Aspern Papers The Aspern Papers – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Aspern Papers The Aspern Papers – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Aspern Papers The Aspern Papers – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Aspern Papers The Aspern Papers – audioBook version at LibriVox

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources


The Aspern Papers – full length opera adaptation

In this version Juliana Bordereau is transformed into an opera singer, and Jeffrey Aspern into a composer.

Composed by Dominick Argento (1987)


The Aspern Papers – plot summary

An unnamed American biographer and literary scholar specialises in the work of Jeffrey Aspern, a celebrated early nineteenth century American poet. He learns from John Cumnor, a colleague in London, that Juliana Bordereau, a woman with whom Aspern had a romantic liaison years ago, is still alive and living in Venice in seclusion. Cumnor has written seeking permission to view any of Aspern’s ‘papers’ which might still be in her possession, but he has been rebuffed by Tina Bordereau, her niece who lives with her.

Henry James The Aspern PapersBelieving that Juliana will be in possession of valuable letters and personal memorabilia, the narrator assumes a false identity and persuades the two women to take him as a lodger in their large but neglected Venetian palazzo. Not daring to reveal his true intent of gaining access to the papers, he agrees to pay an exorbitant amount to rent a suite of rooms.

But the two women live in a state of extreme isolation, and the narrator becomes frustrated in his attempts to make contact with them and win their confidence. Juliana Bordereau is an old and very private woman, but she wishes to secure both a dowry and a potential husband for her plain middle-aged niece before she herself dies.

A battle of wills develops between the three principal characters. Juliana refuses to discuss anything to do with her past, but puts forward her niece. The narrator feels sorry for Tina Bordereau, but eventually manages to persuade her to help him. He reveals his interest in the ‘papers’ and even his real name, and Tina promises to do what she can to help him.

When Juliana falls ill and is thought to be dying, the narrator takes advantage to go into her room at night with the intention of looking for the papers – but he is caught in the act by Juliana herself, who collapses with fright at the intrusion.

The narrator flees Venice in embarrassment , but when he returns he discovers that Juliana has died, without leaving a will. Tina reveals that Juliana had hidden the papers in her bed, but she feels that she cannot show them to the narrator out of respect for her aunt’s wish for privacy. However, she does suggest to him that he would have access to them by natural right if he were ‘part of the family’. The narrator recoils from this oblique offer of marriage in horror.

The next day however he has changed his mind, and visits Tina to give his acceptance. She however tells him that she has burned the entire collection of letters and never wants to see him again.


The Aspern Papers – flim adaptation

Brace yourself. In this recent film version, the action has been transposed from Venice to Venezuela.

Directed by Mariana Hellmund (2010)


Principal characters
I the unnamed narrator, an American writer and biographer of Jeffrey Aspern
Mrs Prest his old friend in Venice
John Cumnor his fellow biographist and Aspern enthusiast in London
Jeffrey Aspern a celebrated early nineteenth century American poet
Miss Juliana Bordereau Aspern’s former lover, an American living in seclusion in Venice
Miss Tina Bordereau her niece
Pasquale the Narrator’s servant
Olimpia Juliana Bordereau’s servant

Henry James's study

Henry James’s study


Further reading

Biographical

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.


Other works by Henry James

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James Daisy MillerDaisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon UK
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon US


Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James web links The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

Henry James web links The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

Red button A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

© Roy Johnson 2011


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Filed Under: Henry James, James - Tales, The Novella Tagged With: Henry James, Literary studies, The Aspern Papers, The Novella

The Aspern Papers and Other Stories

August 28, 2011 by Roy Johnson

stories of writers, readers, and literary reputations

The Aspern Papers (18888) was composed at a critical period in Henry James’s life. It might seem odd one hundred and thirty years later, but his reputation took something of a minor dive in mid career. He was disappointed by the reception of both The Bostonians (1885) and The Princess Cassamassima (1887) and he retreated for a while into the pleasures of the shorter forms of the novella and the short story – both of which he described as ‘tales’. This collection brings together four pieces of work which have a common subject matter – the relationship between authors, readers, and the texts which join them. James was well aware of the rich fictional potential in the writer as a public figure.

The Aspern Papers and Other StoriesThe most famous here is his celebrated novella The Aspern Papers, which like many other of his works has been a fertile source for film, theatre, and opera adaptations. An unnamed writer goes to Venice in search of letters written by Jeffrey Aspern, a famous nineteenth century poet. They were written to and in the possession of Juliana Bordereau, an elderly American woman who was his lover many years ago. She wishes to guard her privacy; the writer wishes to get hold of the letters as material for a biography he is working on. A battle of wills ensues, in which Miss Bordereau dangles before him the prospect of marriage to her niece, Tina Bordereau, a plain middle-aged woman.

It’s a very typical James work, in that there is very little movement or external drama. The three characters are living in the same palazzo in a very charged psychological atmosphere, keeping a very close eye on each other. The denouement is precipitated by Juliana catching the Narrator snooping in her room late at night. The papers have indeed been hidden in a most significant place – but in the end nobody triumphs. In fact, they all fail to get what they want.

James knew full well that many accomplished writers and artists were unremarkable in their private lives, and that conversely there were exuberant talkers and entertainers over the dinner table who had no creative talent. The Private Life is a curious exercise in exploring this difference between an artist’s public manifestation and his personal life. Clare Vawdrey is perfectly at ease in a social group, but when asked to present his latest literary creation, he is unable to face his admirers. He needs privacy and seclusion in order to reveal his imaginative life. This case is wittily contrasted with an example of an accomplished public figure whose personality disappears completely once there is nobody present with whom he can interact.

The Middle Years is a much anthologised tale in which a dying novelist meets a young doctor who is also an enthusiastic reader of his work. Feeling re-charged with creative force by the quality of the younger man’s appreciation, he conceives of a ‘second chance’, an extension to his creative life, in which to say all that he feels he still has within him. But it is too late: he finally realises that life has presented him with his one and only ‘chance’ – and dies.

The Death of the Lion is a variation on the same theme. A journalist feels he must guard and nurture the reputation of Neil Paraday, an ailing novelist he admires. He befriends Paraday, who shows him the manuscript of a novel he has written but not yet published. Paraday becomes celebrated, and he is drawn into fashionable society that basks in his fame but does not actually read his work. The journalist is horrified to learn that the manuscript is being passed around and is eventually lost. Paraday is distracted from his work, becomes ill, and he too dies. But in this version, the journalist marries a fellow Paraday admirer, and they settle to search for the lost manuscript.

There are plenty more stories in the James oeuvre which deal with writers and artists (though none about musicians): he wrote more than a hundred stories in all. But this is an excellent selection – and worth it for the inclusion of the magnificent Aspern Papers alone.

The Aspern Papers and Other Stories Buy the book at Amazon UK

The Aspern Papers and Other Stories Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2011


Henry James, The Aspern Papers and Other Stories, London: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.212, ISBN: 0199538557


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Filed Under: Henry James, Short Stories Tagged With: Henry James, Literary studies, The Aspern Papers, The Short Story

The Awkward Age

April 6, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Awkward Age first appeared as a serial in Harper’s Weekly in 1898-1899 and then as a book later in 1899. It was written during the same period as What Maisie Knew (1896) and The Turn of the Screw (1898) in which the innocence of the young is threatened by the behaviour of the adults amongst whom they live. The novel was written in the late phase of James’s career, just after the period of his disastrous experiments in the theatre, and it seems to bear the traces of a theatrical conception. The narrative is progressed largely through conversation between the characters, and each ‘book’ of the novel’s structure is based in a single location. There is very little action in the conventional sense of that term: people simply visit each other’s sitting rooms and talk over tea.

Henry James portrait

Henry James – by John Singer Sargeant


The Awkward Age – critical commentary

James’s purported main issue is the vulnerability of Nanda, surrounded as she is by a variety of dubious adult influences. But she is not the dramatic centre of the narrative. James focuses his attention on the inconsequential issues of how much one adult character knows about another, or what fleeting liaison from the past might resurface to cause embarrassment.

At the start of the novel we are led to believe that Nanda is in need of protection, since she is surrounded by such bad influences in her parents and their friends – but by the end of the novel she has become as scheming and duplicitous as they are.

James tries his best to be funny in his introductions of characters, but they are not properly or fully realised and not dramatised, despite the presentation of the story via conversations – as on a stage.

He goes to endless lengths in spinning a web of subtleties regarding social relationships – but the characters are so vacuous and insignificant that there is little incentive for the reader to keep track of it all. Page after page is filled with vapid posturing, insincere flattery, snobbish one-upmanship, desperately contrived bon mots, and strained metaphors.

Lots of energy is expended by the characters making very oblique references to other people, usually via the use of ambiguous pronouns. It is not clear who they are talking about – both to readers and their interlocutors. Their references are mis-interpreted as part of the conversation and have to be spelled out and explained. The novel would be at least one third shorter if the characters made the subjects of their statements clear.

They also converse using the sorts of extended metaphors which James normally employs as a third person omniscient narrator in his other novels. Their conversations are extremely mannered and quite improbably unrealistic.

Social anxiety

The principal concerns of the characters are class anxiety, money, and the marriage market. There is also the concern for social status, property, and income common to the literature (and society) of this period. Characters take endless trouble to determine how much capital and annual income other people might have, as a clear indicator of their social worth and their potential for forming more profitable alliances.

Social indicators of the changing nature of society at the end of the nineteenth century include women smoking and using slang, and members of the upper class having to rent out their country houses to generate income. There is also repeated concern for what people are permitted to call each other – that is the use and prohibitions of using forenames only, nicknames, or formal titles. These seem very much a signal of social strain as the Victorian period came to an end.

What is slightly unusual in The Awkward Age is the fact that two important characters are sufficiently close to the bottom of their social class that they need paid employment (albeit in the form of sinecures). Vanderbank is a civil servant, and so is Edward Brookenham – his position having been bought with his wife’s influence.

A biographical reading

The relationship between the elder Mr Longdon and the much younger Vanderbank is shot through with homo-erotic undertones. Both of them are bachelors. Longdon has failed to marry, despite his previous relationships with women – one of whom is Vanderbank’s mother. The elder man ‘takes a fancy’ to the younger, and in a sense tries to ‘procure’ Nanda for him by offering to supply her dowry. The revelation scene where Longdon makes his financial proposal regarding Nanda is full of sexual innuendo and double entendres. It takes place late at night, just as they are about to go to bed, with the younger man lighting the elder’s candle for him.

It is difficult to escape the sense that in this novel (and others of the late period) that James was wrestling subconsciously with his own latent homo-eroticism, which we know was a sub-text to his later years. He seems to put in play the alternative prospects of heterosexual marriage and bachelorhood in order to find good reasons for retaining the default setting of remaining single.


The Awkward Age – study resources

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – Everyman Classics – Amazon UK

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – Everyman Classics – Amazon US

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – Kindle eBook edition

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – (unabridged) Audio book

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – eBook editions at Gutenberg

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – HTML version (with notes)

The Awkward Age The Awkward Age – Full text + James’s Preface

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Awkward Age


The Awkward Age – plot summary

Mrs Brookenham and her husband Edward are the centre of a social group of upper-class people in London. Their daughter Fernanda has become of marriageable age, but has not yet been introduced into society. Nevertheless, she has young married women as friends, and this is considered by some as rather dangerous in terms of her limited knowledge of the world.

The Awkward AgeWhen Mr Longdon is introduced to their social circle, he is amazed at how closely ‘Nanda’ resembles her grandmother, with whom he was once in love. Mrs Brookenham decides to introduce Nanda into adult society, with the hope that she will secure a rich husband, preferably Mitchy, who is only the son of a shoemaker, but very wealthy. The first half of the novel is spent in exploring exactly what the characters know of each other’s intentions. It also establishes Mrs Brookenham as a vivacious and manipulative woman who wishes to influence the lives of those around her for her own advantage – including her own daughter.

The plot (as such) starts mid way through the novel when Mr Longdon, moved by the similarity between Nanda and her grandmother, decides to bestow a substantial amount of money on her as a form of dowry. He reveals this in confidence to Vanderbank, hoping that he will offer to marry her. Instead, Van reveals the offer to Mrs Brookenham and to Mitchy.

Mitchy is porevailed upon to marry Aggie, which he does in order to please Nanda, with whom he is in love. When his marriage turns out to be disappointing, he solicits Nanda, who keeps him at bay by palming him off onto her mother.

We are led to believe (by the conventions of the realist novel) that Nanda is in love with ‘Van’, but when asked she denies the fact, and although Van flirts with her, he never declares a serious interest. Nanda is therefore left with only a dubious and ill-defined relationship with Mr Longdon, and at the end of the novel she is planning to go on a protracted holiday with him.


Principal characters
Gustavus Vanderbank a civil servant (34), the Deputy Chairman of the General Audit
Mr Longdon wealthy older man (70+) who once had a relationship with both Van’s and Mrs Brookenham’s mothers
Edward Brookenham a civil servant in charge of ‘Rivers and Lakes’ (a position bought with his wife’s influence)
Mrs Brookenham his wife (41) who is in love with Van
Harold Brookenham their feckless son
Fernanda (Nanda) Brookenham their attractive daughter (18)
Lady Julia Mrs Brookenham’s mother
Duchess Jane Edward Brookenham’s cousin, protectoress to Aggie
Agnesina (Little Aggie) niece of the duchess
Mrs Tisley Grendon friend of Nanda’s
Mr Mitchett (Mitchy) a chinless wonder, son of a shoemaker, with £40K p.a.
Lord Petherton ‘kept’ by Mitchy
Carrie Donner friend of Nanda’s
Mrs Beach Donner Carrie’s mother
Lady Fanny Cashmore sister of Mrs Grendon
Mr Cashmore brother-in-law to Petherton – lends money to Harold Brookenham

Henry James's Study

Henry James’s study


Further reading

Biographical

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.


Other works by Henry James

Henry James Washington SquareWashington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US


Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James web links The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

Henry James web links The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

Red button A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James web links Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

© Roy Johnson 2011


More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories


Filed Under: Henry James Tagged With: Henry James, Literary studies, The Awkward Age, The novel

The Bostonians

September 22, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Bostonians was first published as a serial in The Century Magazine in 1885-1886, then as a three volume novel in February 1886. It is generally regarded at the high point of what is called the ‘middle period’ of Henry James’ development as a novelist. He had re-visited America in the middle of the decade following the death of his parents; the novel is set in Boston and New York; and it clearly reflects some of his contemporary impressions on the nation, written as a native American. The novel as a matter of fact includes some rather touching reflections on the Civil War, which had only concluded twenty years before (and in which James had not participated). But its principal subject matter is ‘The Woman Question’ – that is, the conflict between traditional views of the role of women in society, and the views of suffragists and what today would be called supporters of women’s liberation.

The Bostonians

Summer in New England – Frank W. Benson (1862-1951)


The Bostonians – critical commentary

Narrative

Henry James uses third person omniscient narrative mode for the majority of the novel. That is, he knows all the events that take place and he reveals the inner feelings and thoughts of his characters. But from time to time he slips into a first person narrative mode to pretend that he has only a partial view of events.

I know not what may have been the reality of Miss Chancellor’s other premonitions, but there is no doubt that in this respect she took Verena’s measure on the spot.

He also comments on the narrative itself, revealing himself as the author.

If we were at this moment to take, in a single glance, an inside view of Mrs Burrage (a liberty we have not yet ventured on), I suspect we should find that she was considerably exasperated by her visitor’s superior tone, at seeing herself regarded by this dry, shy, obstinate, provincial young woman as superficial.

Technically, this is a curious mixture of narrative modes – one moment claiming to know the innermost shifts in his characters’ feelings, and the next moment feigning ignorance. It perhaps reflects the ambiguity and uncertainty that he increasing explored into his novels from this period onwards.

It is a very typical James narrative in being composed of a series of rather static tableaux. The locations of the action shift between Boston and New York, but the drama unfolds through a series of meetings where the focus of attention is largely on the psychological state of the characters.

Feminist politics

When the novel first appeared it was criticised by much of its American audience, largely on the grounds that James had satirised some well known figures. More than one hundred years later, these issues have faded, and it is possible to take a more balanced view of the reform movement that he portrays.

It is quite clear that the most active and senior women in the suffrage movement – Olive Chancellor and Mrs Farrage – are depicted negatively as vicious harpies. They are both more concerned with social control mechanisms and feeding their own egos than genuine concern for women as individuals. Even their male counterpart Selah Tarrant is revealed as a tin pot shaman – a bogus snake-oil salesman who virtually sells his own daughter.

But this negative picture is balanced by the positive characterisation of Doctor Prance and Miss Birdseye. Doctor Prance is a professional young woman who puts her own ego to one side in pursuit of her interest in medicine and science. And Miss Birdseye has a life history of genuine devotion to the cause. She has campaigned in the South for the abolition of slavery, and has taught negroes (as James calls them in the language of the period) to read and write.

It is significant that both Miss Birdseye and Dr Prance have friendly relations with Basil Ransom, whereas Olive Chancellor immediately takes a visceral dislike to him.

The Boston marriage

The other major issue in the novel is the relationship between Olive Chancellor and Verena Tarrant – and by implication their separate relationships with Basil Ransom. The term Boston marriage is used to describe two women living together, independent of financial support of a man.

Olive Chancellor has inherited wealth, so she is able to pay off Mr and Mrs Tarrant to take control of Verena and bring her to live under the same roof. However, contemporary readers do not need brass plaques on their doors to recognise that what James depicts on Olive Chancellor’s part is a passionate lesbian desire for Verena.

Olive is totally possessive of Verena, and she has an equally passionate hatred of any potential rivals – particularly of men. She repeatedly admonishes Verena for not disliking men generically. Henry Burrage’s interest in Verena is abhorrent to Olive, but not nearly as much as that of Basil Ransom. Olive is a general man hater, but in particular she sees the tall Mississippian as an erotic rival.

In fact the whole of the novel is an account of the psychological war between Olive and Basil for possession of Verena. Despite Basil’s conservative (Neanderthal) views on the role of women, Verena is eventually attracted to him by what we might nowadays call his personal magnetism and his integrity. In the end she does submit to his wish for a woman who will give up her role in public life for an existence which is entirely domestic.

At the end of the novel she leaves with tears in her eyes which were ‘not the last she was destined to shed’. So James leaves the triangular struggle between these characters as a surprising triumph for Basil Ransom, a failure for Olive Chancellor, but a very ambiguous resolution for Verena Tarrant.

The Civil War

Basil Ransom is from Mississippi, and has fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederates – that is the slave-owning southern states. In fact his family has lost its property (and its slaves) because of the war – which is why Basil has taken up work in the legal profession and moved north to seek employment.

He clings to the aristocratic values of politeness, courtesy, and reactionary social values, and is clearly not suited to the world of commerce in which he finds himself. It is these views and attitudes which arouse the antagonism of (some of) the feminists, because their cause has its roots in the Abolitionist anti-slavery movement in which characters such as Miss Birdseye and Mrs Tarrant’s family have been active

In one of the pivotal meetings of the novel Verena Tarrant takes him to look round Harvard University in Cambridge, just outside Boston. There in the Memorial Hall he looks on the names of those who have died on the opposite side.

The effect of the place is singularly noble and solemn … It stands there for duty and honour, it speaks of sacrifice and example, seems a kind of temple to youth, manhood, generosity. Most of them were young, all were in their prime, and all of them had fallen … For Ransom these things were not a challenge or a taunt; they touched him with respect, with the sentiment of beauty. He was capable of being a generous foeman, and he forgot, now, the whole question of sides and parties; the simple emotion of the old fighting-time came back to him, and the monument around him seemed an embodiment of that memory; it arched over his friends as well as enemies, the victims of defeat as well as the sons of triumph.

Henry James was himself from the northern states, and was eligible for conscription when the war began. But he rather conveniently developed a back problem (‘that obscure hurt’) when it was time to join the Unionist army.


The Bostonians – study resources

The Bostonians The Bostonians – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Bostonians The Bostonians – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Bostonians The Bostonians – Everyman’s Library Classics – Amazon UK

The Bostonians The Bostonians – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Bostonians The Bostonians – Modern Library – Amazon UK

The Bostonians The Bostonians – DVD film version – Amazon UK

The Bostonians The Bostonians – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Bostonians The Bostonians – CD audioBook version (unabridged) – Amazon UK

The Bostonians The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Bostonians The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

The Bostonians Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Bostonians Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Bostonians


The Bostonians – plot summary

In 1875 young Mississippian lawyer Basil Ransom is invited to visit his cousin Olive Chancellor in Boston. She is a feminist and radical social reformer, who takes him to one of their meetings where he encounter Verena Tarrant, an inspirational speaker. Olive immediately feels a passionate attachment to Verena. Basil likes her as an attractive young woman, but he thinks her ‘inspirations’ are dubious, and largely influenced by her father, who is a ‘mesmeric healer’ (and a complete fraud).

Henry James The BostoniansThe relationship between Olive and Verena develops rapidly, encourages by Mrs Tarrant, who sees it as a source of social advantage. Mr (‘Dr’) Tarrant sees it as a potential source of income, which he conspicuously lacks. Olive is so possessive of Verena that she asks her to promise not to marry. Olive wants to control Verena for the cause of greater women’s suffrage, but it is clear that she also wishes to control her emotionally. The journalist Matthias Pardon proposes to ‘promote’ Verena as a money-making attraction, but Olive refuses to allow it. He then proposes marriage instead, but Verena turns down his offer.

Olive then pays the Tarrants (who she dislikes intensely) a large sum to take Verena to live with her, which she does willingly, embracing the suffrage ideology which Olive promotes. However, whereas Verena thinks some men might be acceptable, Olive thinks that all men are not. The two women embark together on a trip to Europe.

Meanwhile, Basil Ransom has not done well in his legal business in New York. He is tempted by what appears to be Adeline Luna’s hints of marriage. But when he hears that Verena has returned from Europe he goes to visit her in Boston.

She shows him around Harvard University, feeling that she is betraying the understanding she shares with Olive that men should be discouraged. Ransom patronises and insults her regarding woman’s suffrage issues, but it is quite clear that he is deeply attracted to her. A great deal turns on whether their meeting will be revealed to Olive or not.

Ransom is invited to Verena’s lecture at Mrs Burrage’s house in New York, where he continues to clash ideologically with Olive, is ambushed by Adelina, and realises that he has fallen in love with Verena.

There are repeated scenes of conflict between Ransom and Olive as he contrives to meet Verena privately. Olive interrogates Verena regarding how much contact she has had with Ransom. Verena tells her everything – except the day she spent alone with him in Boston.

Mrs Burrage then summons Olive and asks her to support her son Henry’s bid to marry Verena. Olive thinks that this might be less ‘dangerous’ (as she sees it) than an alliance with Basil Ransom.

Whilst Olive and Verena are in New York, Basil engineers a private meeting with Verena and persuades her to go for a walk in Central Park. There he reveals his literary ambitions to her, and despite their differences over the role of women in society, she becomes more sympathetic to him.

Some months later Basil goes to visit the two women whilst they are on summer holiday, preparing for a major public lecture by Verena. He reveals that he has had an article accepted, and proposes marriage to her.

Verena realises that she is in love with Basil, and is in great anguish regarding his offer, since it would involve her giving up her work as a public speaker. Olive is in even greater anguish, realising that she is in danger of losing Verena to ‘the enemy’.

Just as Basil realises he is having an effect on Verena, Olive thwarts him by spiriting her away in collusion with her parents. Basil searches, but cannot find her. But he appears in Boston on the occasion of her major public lecture. His appearance there unnerves her, the lecture does not take place, which causes a scandal, and Basil leaves with Verena in tears.


The Bostonians

first edition published by Macmillan


The Bostonians – principal characters
Basil Ransom a lawyer from Mississippi, working in New York
Olive Chancellor a feminist and reformer, living in Boston – Ransom’s cousin
Mrs Adelina Luna Olive’s younger sister
Newton Mrs Luna’s son
Miss Birdseye elderly supporter of women’s causes
Mrs Farringer feminist and demagogue
Amariah Farrinder her husband
Dr Mary J. Prance young boyish physician, lodging in same house as Miss Birdseye
‘Dr’ Selah Tarrant mesmeric healer and pious fraud
Mrs Tarrant daughter of famous abolitionist
Verena Tarrant their daughter – inspirational speaker – with bright red hair
Matthias Pardon a young publicity-seeking journalist
Henry Burrage art-collecting Harvard ‘student’ and admirer of Verena
Mrs Burrage society woman – Henry’s mother
Miss Catching a librarian at Harvard University
Mr Filer Olive Chancellor’s lecture agent

The Bostonians – film adaptation

Directed by Merchant-Ivory (1984)

Starring Christopher Reeve and Vanessa Redgrave

Red button Watch full length movie


Further reading

Biographical

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.


Other works by Henry James

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James Daisy MillerDaisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon UK
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon US


Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James web links The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

Henry James web links The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

Red button A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James web links Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

© Roy Johnson 2011


More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories


Filed Under: Henry James Tagged With: American literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Bostonians, The novel

The Complete Tales of Henry James

March 24, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorials, critical commentaries, and study guides

This is a series of tutorials and guidance notes on the complete tales of Henry James. He gave the stories the name ‘tales’ because hardly any of them are now what would be considered traditional short stories. Indeed, several of them are now regularly regarded as novellas. There are over one hundred tales in the complete collection. The series is shown here in alphabetical order.

The Tales of Henry James   A Bundle of Letters — (1879)
The Tales of Henry James   A Day of Days — (1866)
The Tales of Henry James   A Landscape Painter — (1866)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   A Light Man — (1869)
The Tales of Henry James   A London Life — (1888)
The Tales of Henry James   A Most Extraordinary Case — (1868)
The Tales of Henry James   A New England Winter — (1884)
The Tales of Henry James   A Passionate Pilgrim — (1871)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   A Problem — (1868)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   A Round of Visits — (1910)
The Tales of Henry James   A Tragedy of Error — (1864)
The Tales of Henry James   Adina — (1874)
The Tales of Henry James   An International Episode — (1874)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   At Isella — (1871)
The Tales of Henry James   Benvolio — (1875)
The Tales of Henry James   Broken Wings — (1900)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   Brooksmith — (1891)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   Collaboration — (1892)
The Tales of Henry James   Covering End — (1895)
The Tales of Henry James   Crapy Cornelia — (1909)
The Tales of Henry James   Crawford’s Consistency — (1876)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   Daisy Miller — (1878)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   De Grey: A Romance — (1868)
The Tales of Henry James   Eugene Pickering — (1874)
The Tales of Henry James   Europe — (1899)
The Tales of Henry James   Flickerbridge — (1902)
The Tales of Henry James   Fordham Castle — (1904)
The Tales of Henry James   Four Meetings — (1877)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   Gabrielle de Bergerac — (1869)
The Tales of Henry James   Georgina’s Reasons — (1884)
The Tales of Henry James   Glasses — (1896)
The Tales of Henry James   Greville Fane — (1892)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   Guest’s Confession — (1872)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   In the Cage — (1898)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   Jersey Villas — (1892)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   John Delavoy — (1898)
The Tales of Henry James   Julia Bride — (1908)
The Tales of Henry James   Lady Barbarina — (1884)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   Longstaff’s Marriage — (1878)
The Tales of Henry James   Lord Beaupre — (1892)
The Tales of Henry James   Louisa Pallant — (1888)
The Tales of Henry James   Madame de Mauves   — (1874)
The Tales of Henry James   Master Eustace   — (1871)
The Tales of Henry James   Maud-Evelyn   — (1900)
The Tales of Henry James   Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie   — (1900)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   Mora Montravers   — (1909)
The Tales of Henry James   Mrs Medwin   — (1901)
The Tales of Henry James   Mrs Temperly   — (1887)
The Tales of Henry James   My Friend Bingham   — (1867)
The Tales of Henry James   Nona Vincent   — (1892)
The Tales of Henry James   Osborne’s Revenge   — (1868)
The Tales of Henry James   Owen Wingrave   — (1892)
The Tales of Henry James   Pandora   — (1884)
The Tales of Henry James   Paste   — (1899)
The Tales of Henry James   Poor Richard   — (1867)
The Tales of Henry James   Professor Fargo   — (1874)
The Tales of Henry James   Sir Edmund Orme   — (1891)
The Tales of Henry James   The Abasement of the Northmores   — (1900)
The Tales of Henry James   The Altar of the Dead   — (1895)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Aspern Papers   — (1888)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Author of Beltraffio   — (1884)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Beast in the Jungle   — (1903)
The Tales of Henry James   The Beldonald Holbein   — (1901)
The Tales of Henry James   The Bench of Desolation   — (1909)
The Tales of Henry James   The Birthplace   — (1903)
The Tales of Henry James   The Chaperon   — (1891)
The Tales of Henry James   The Coxon Fund   — (1894)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Death of the Lion   — (1894)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Diary of a Man of Fifty   — (1879)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Figure in the Carpet   — (1896)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Friends of the Friends   — (1896)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Ghostly Rental   — (1876)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Given Case   — (1899)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Great Condition   — (1899)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Great Good Place   — (1900)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Impressions of a Cousin   — (1883)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Jolly Corner   — (1908)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Last of the Valerii   — (1874)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Lesson of the Master   — (1888)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Liar   — (1888)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Madonna of the Future   — (1873)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Marriages   — (1891)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Middle Years   — (1893)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Next Time   — (1895)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Papers   — (1903)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Patagonia   — (1888)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Path of Duty   — (1884)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Pension Beaurepas   — (1879)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Point of View   — (1882)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Private Life   — (1892)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Pupil   — (1891)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Real Right Thing   — (1899)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Real Thing   — (1892)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Romance of Certain Old Clothes   — (1868)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Siege of London   — (1883)
The Complete Tales of Henry James   The Solution   — (1889)
The Tales of Henry James   The Special Type   — (1900)
The Tales of Henry James   The Story in It   — (1902)
The Tales of Henry James   The Story of a Masterpiece   — (1868)
The Tales of Henry James   The Story of a Year   — (1865)
The Tales of Henry James   The Sweetheart of M. Briseux   — (1873)
The Tales of Henry James   The Third Person   — (1900)
The Tales of Henry James   The Tone of Time   — (1900)
The Tales of Henry James   The Tree of Knowledge   — (1900)
The Tales of Henry James   The Turn of the Screw   — (1898)
The Tales of Henry James   The Two Faces   — (1900)
The Tales of Henry James   The Velvet Glove   — (1909)
The Tales of Henry James   The Visits   — (1892)
The Tales of Henry James   The Wheel of Time   — (1892)
The Tales of Henry James   Theodolinde   — (1878)
The Tales of Henry James   Travelling Companions   — (1870)
The Tales of Henry James   Two Countries   — (1888)


Other works by Henry James

Henry James Washington SquareWashington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013


More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories


Filed Under: Henry James, Short Stories, The Short Story Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, The Short Story

The Europeans

February 6, 2015 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Europeans was first published as a serial of four parts in the Atlantic Monthly July-October 1878, then in book form later the same year in London (Macmillan) and Boston (Houghton, Osgood). It carries the sub-title ‘A Sketch’, and James did not include the novel in the New York edition of his collected works in 1913. Nevertheless, it marks an important point in the early phase of his development as a novelist.

The Europeans


The Europeans – critical commentary

The international theme

This is an early example of a subject which Henry James was to make into his signature theme in later works – the clash between the Old World and the New – more specifically between traditional nineteenth century Europe and the democratic and republican states of north America. More specifically still, in The Europeans it is between the self-denying and rather strict puritanism of New England and the raffish Bohemian ‘sophistication’ of European adventurers who have mixed motives.

The tensions and misunderstandings between one culture and another were to be an important feature of his works, and in the very same year of its publication he also published Daisy Miller, one of his most famous tales, which explores the same issues from the opposite geographic perspective – the unfortunate result of a free-spirited young American woman challenging European social conventions. In The Europeans the results of these cultural differences have a happier outcome in two successful relationships, though it has to be said that James himself did not generally favour happy endings to his works, and many critics have found the conclusion of two youthful, optimistically portrayed marriages less than convincing.

Money

Baroness Eugenia and her brother Felix arrive in New England with the trappings of European sophistication, but they have no money. She is a commoner who is under threat of being dispossessed by her husband and his family. Felix has been a musician and an actor, and is under contract to produce sketches for a magazine: in other words he is a Bohemian drifter. Both of them have pecuniary reasons for seeking out their rich relatives in the New World.

James does not make clear the source of William Wentworth’s wealth. He owns the big house in which he and his family live, plus a smaller house on the estate. He ‘puts his hand in his pocket’ for any of his family’s needs – but we are not told where the cash he withdraws has its source, except that he has an office he goes to three times a week where he conducts ‘highly confidential trust business’. Similarly, Robert Acton is also very wealthy, but we do not know the source of his wealth either – except that he has tripled an original sum.

The morganatic marriage

In the context of European royalty, a morganatic marriage was one where a male of ‘high’ birth married a woman of much lower rank. Traditionally, royal or noble families were categorised or ‘graded’ according to a snobbish notion of genealogical, biographical, and titular attributes. The main purpose of this system was to keep power and property concentrated in the hands of the ruling class. A morganatic union prevented the lower class wife or any of her children inheriting the husband’s titles, privileges, or property – and thereby diluting any of this concentrated power by distributing it amongst the lower orders.

The pseudo-systematic rationale of this categorisation was printed with characteristic Teutonic thoroughness in the Almanach de Gotha until 1944, when the publisher’s archives were destroyed by invading Soviet troops. Baroness Eugenia (a commoner) is married to the Prince Adolf of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein, whose family would like him to marry someone more suitable, which he is perfectly able to do under such an arrangement.

Structure

The first half of the novel seems poised and successful – with the slightly louche ‘adventurers’ Eugenia and Felix confronted by the stern orthodoxy of puritan New England. James obviously admires the upright and decent values of his fellow Americans, but he has no difficulty making light fun of their extreme piety and their inability to ‘have fun’.

Also successfully contrasted are Eugenia’s ambiguous motives with the Wentworths’ principled offer of Christian comfort to their European cousins. Eugenia is ostensibly visiting America to meet her relatives, but she is also ‘seeking her fortune’. Her husband’s family is in the process of getting rid of her, and she is looking for an alternative social position (and source of income)- but she doesn’t want to broadcast the fact.

These two social forces are kept evenly balanced for the first six chapters of the novel. Unfortunately, the narrative then suffers a severe fracture in terms of credibility at its half way point. The ultra-conservative and puritanical Mr Wentworth, having even refused to have his portrait painted by Felix, suddenly co-operates with this idea without any justification for this change of mind. He then reveals to Felix the truth about his son Clifford, who has been sent down from Harvard for drunkenness. It is simply not conceivable that this ascetic and formidably private man would change his mind on such a matter, and even less reveal such embarrassing information to a dubious outsider whom he had only recently met.

If that is not stretching credibility far enough, Mr Wentworth then accepts Felix’s suggestions of luring his son away from the temptations of drink by dangling the allures of an attractive (and married!) woman before the boy – namely Felix’s sister, the Baroness Eugenia. No stern New England patriarch would condone this sort of behaviour. These are creaking plot devices which damage the delicate picture of conflicting cultures that has been built up to this point. Even though Clifford Wentworth does fall under the spell of Eugenia, then survives to marry Bostonian Lizzie Acton, this is part of the ‘tying up of lose ends’ that injures the latter part of the narrative.

The Europeans is often compared with James’s later novel The Bostonians (1885-6), with which it has much in common. There is a similar lightweight satire of puritan New England values and constrained behaviour- plus a far deeper inspection of early feminism in the later novel; but more importantly, there are no easy solutions offered to the personal dilemmas of the characters. The hero Basil Ransom makes a spirited attempt to ‘rescue’ Verena Tarrant from the influence of the feminist Olive Chancellor, but when he does so, she leaves with ‘tears in her eyes’. The neat pairings and marriages that conclude The Europeans do not seem nearly so satisfactory.


The Europeans – study resources

The Europeans The Europeans – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Europeans The Europeans – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Europeans The Europeans – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Europeans The Europeans – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Europeans The Europeans – Kindle edition

The Europeans The Europeans – eBooks at Project Gutenberg

The Europeans The Essential Henry James Collection – Kindle edition (40 works)

The Europeans The Europeans – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Europeans The Europeans – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Europeans


The Europeans – plot summary

Chapter I.   Baroness Eugenia Munster and her brother Felix Young have travelled from Europe to visit their cousins in Boston, USA. Eugenia has the additional purpose of seeking her fortune, since she knows her German husband wishes to divorce her. In New York she is vexed by what she perceives as the plainness of the New World, whilst her brother is cheerfully enthusiastic about what he finds there.

Chapter II.   At her family home in Boston, Gertrude Wentworth feels ‘restless’ and does not wish to go to church, despite the urging of her elder sister Charlotte. The minister Mr Brand calls and wishes to speak to Gertrude in private, but she puts him off. When Felix arrives to present himself she becomes immediately fascinated by his European background and complex family history- particularly that of his sister the Baroness.

Chapter III.   Next day Felix describes the visit to his sister Eugenia, who is mainly interested in the wealth and the social caché of the Wentworths and their circle. Eugenia meets and charms the entire family, and wastes no time in asking to be ‘taken care of’.

Chapter IV.   There is a great deal of discussion amongst the extended Wentworth family regarding the potential dangers of being exposed to European influences. However, the austere Mr Wentworth finally invites Eugenia and Felix to stay in a separate house on his estate. Eugenia adds decorations to the puritan ‘chalet’ and Felix finds delight in everything, especially the freedom to socialise with young unmarried ladies. Eugenia holds herself aloof, but pretends to feel neglected. Mr Brand and Robert Acton begin to pay her social visits.

Chapter V.   Mr Wentworth does not know how to understand Eugenia, and he refuses to have his portrait painted by Felix. Gertrude however falls under the romantic spell of Felix. Mr Brand eventually declares his love for Gertrude, who repudiates him without hesitation.

Chapter VI.   Robert Acton is intrigued by Eugenia and her exotic character, but he tries to conceal his interest behind a facade of nonchalance. Eugenia explains to him the complex history of her marriage and its present state. She has a prepared document rejecting the Prince her husband which she only needs to sign to gain her freedom – which she flirtatiously suggests to him that she might do.

Chapter VII.   Felix eventually persuades Mr Wentworth to sit for his portrait. Felix has fallen for Gertrude, but as a penniless artist with no prospects he does not wish to take advantage of his hosts by openly paying court to her. Mr Wentworth reveals to Felix that his son Clifford has been sent down from Harvard for drunkenness. Felix suggests that Clifford should pay court to Eugenia – but Mr Wentworth refuses to accept the idea. However, Clifford does visit Eugenia and suggests that Charlotte should marry Mr Brand.

Chapter VIII.   Mr Brand oppresses Gertrude with further courtship, which she flatly rejects. She asks her sister Charlotte to marry him instead. Meanwhile, Clifford is given lessons in emotional and social life skills from Eugenia, who suggests that he visit her in Germany when she returns to Europe.

Chapter IX.   Robert Acton is not sure if he is in love with Eugenia or not, but cannot stop thinking about her. After returning from Newport he visits her late at night, and asks about her ‘renunciation’ document, about which she refuses to comment. Clifford suddenly appears, at which she becomes difficult and argumentative. Next day Acton challenges Clifford about Eugenia – but they lie to each other about their intentions.

Chapter X.   The weather gets worse and Eugenia is bored. She reproaches Felix for his relentless cheerfulness. He hopes to marry Gertrude, and he urges her to accept Acton as a potential husband. Felix reveals to Mr Brand that Charlotte is hopelessly in love with him, which leaves Brand rather perplexed.

Chapter XI.   Eugenia visits old Mrs Acton to say a goodbye. Mrs Acton implores her to stay – for her son’s sake. Eugenia meets Robert Acton in the garden as she is leaving. He is in love with her, but suspects her of lying. Meanwhile Felix appeals to Charlotte for assistance in his quest for Gertrude. He wishes to overcome Mr Wentworth’s objections to his Bohemianism.

Chapter XII.   Felix pleads his case for marrying Gertrude to her father. The family are united in their plea that Mr Wentworth give his consent. In the middle of this discussion, Mr Brand appears and requests permission to marry the couple. Mr Wentworth finally consents. That same evening it is announced that Clifford and Lizzie Acton will marry at the same time. Eugenia equivocates with Robert Acton one last time, reveals to Felix that she has not signed her release document, and goes back to Europe.


The Europeans – principal characters
Baroness Eugenia Munster morganatic wife to Prince Adolf
Felix Young her brother, an adventurer, painter, and amateur
Mr William Wentworth a rich Bostonian puritan
Gertrude Wentworth his spirited younger daughter (23)
Carlotte Wentworth her serious elder sister
Clifford Wentworth younger brother, rusticated from Harvard
Mr Brand a serious Unitarian minister
Robert Acton a rich Bostonian ex-Harvard
Lizzie Acton his pretty younger sister
Mrs Acton his elderly mother who is dying

Other work by Henry James

Henry James Washington SquareWashington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon US

 

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

 

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US


Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

© Roy Johnson 2013


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Filed Under: Henry James Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The novel

The Golden Bowl

February 26, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, resources, video, further reading

The Golden Bowl (1904) comes as the climax of James’ late period. His writing is mannered, baroque, complex, and focused intently on the psychological relationships between his characters. There is very little ‘plot’ here in the conventional sense. The bowl in the title is a gift from one couple to another – but there’s a lot more to it than that of course. It will not be giving away too much of the story to say that it concerns an American heiress as she becomes aware of the secret affair between her new husband and her father’s young wife. As usual in many of James’s great novels, much of the drama is fuelled by relations between Europe and America (his ‘International’ theme) by class, social mobility, and by sex and money.

Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant


The Golden Bowl – plot summary

Prince Amerigo, an impoverished but charismatic Italian nobleman, is in London for his marriage to Maggie Verver, only child of the fabulously wealthy American financier and art collector, Adam Verver. Amerigo meets Charlotte Stant, a former mistress who he didn’t marry because both of them were seeking to marry into money. They go shopping for a wedding present for Maggie. They find a curiosity shop where the Jewish shopkeeper offers them an antique gilded crystal bowl. But the rather anti-Semitic Prince declines to purchase the bowl because he suspects it contains a hidden flaw.

Henry James The Golden BowlAfter Maggie’s marriage she is afraid that her father has become lonely. She persuades him to propose to Charlotte, unaware of the past relationship between Charlotte and Amerigo. Adam’s proposal is accepted, and soon after the wedding, Charlotte and the Prince find themselves thrown together because their respective spouses seem more interested in their father-daughter relationship than in their marriages. The Prince and Charlotte finally consummate an adulterous affair.

Maggie eventually begins to suspect Amerigo and Charlotte. This suspicion is intensified when she accidentally meets the shopkeeper and buys the golden bowl. Uncomfortable with the high price she paid for the bowl, the shopkeeper visits Maggie and confesses to overcharging her. At Maggie’s home he sees photographs of Amerigo and Charlotte. He tells Maggie of the pair’s shopping trip on the eve of her marriage and their intimate conversation in his shop. (They had spoken Italian, but he happens to understand the language.)

Maggie now confronts Amerigo, and then begins a secret campaign to separate the Prince and Charlotte while never letting her father know of their affair. She lies to Charlotte about not having anything to accuse her of, and she gradually persuades her father to return to America with his wife. Amerigo appears impressed by Maggie’s delicate diplomacy, after he had previously regarded her as rather naive and immature. The novel ends with Adam and Charlotte about to depart for America, while Amerigo can “see nothing but” Maggie and embraces her.


Study resources

The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon UK

The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl – etext of the 1909 edition

The Golden Bowl The Golden Bowl – audioBook at LibriVox

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James – biographical notes

Red button The Golden Bowl – Merchant-Ivory film site

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources

The Golden Bowl


The Golden Bowl – characters
Adam Verver an American multi-millionaire art collector
Maggie his loving daughter
Prince Amerigo an impoverished Italian nobleman
Charlotte Stant an impoverished friend of Maggie
Fanny Assingham an inquisitive friend of the family
The Colonel her easy-going husband

The Golden Bowl – film version

2000 film adaptation

Merchant-Ivory pull out all the stops in their repertoire for creating lush period detail. Costumes, furniture, jewellery, and art objects all help to recreate a convincing fin de siècle atmosphere. The inclusion of original film footage from early last century adds tremendously to the period flavour. Nick Nolte plays the American millionaire Adam Verver, Kate Beckinsdale his daughter Maggie, and Uma Thurman the poor but scheming Charlotte. James Fox and Angelica Huston in supporting roles provide added depth. There is an odd use of ‘chapter’ titles – “Adam Verver’s rented castle” – which one associates more with the eighteenth century than the early twentieth, and as in their other productions, the sex is far more explicit than in the original. James implies: Merchant-Ivory shows.

Red button See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database


Henry James's study

Henry James’s study


Further reading

Biographical

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.


Other works by Henry James

Henry James The BostoniansThe Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette and radical feminist. Trying to pull her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, a vigorous young man from the South to whom Verena becomes more and more attracted. The dramatic contest to possess her is played out with some witty and often rather sardonic touches, and as usual James keeps the reader guessing about the outcome until the very last page.

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Henry James What Masie KnewWhat Masie Knew (1897) A young girl is caught between parents who are in the middle of personal conflict, adultery, and divorce. Can she survive without becoming corrupted? It’s touch and go – and not made easier for the reader by the attentions of an older man who decides to ‘look after’ her. This comes from the beginning of James’s ‘Late Phase’, so be prepared for longer and longer sentences. In fact it’s said that whilst composing this novel, James switched from writing longhand to using dictation – and it shows if you look carefully enough – part way through the book.

Henry James What Masie Knew Buy the book at Amazon UK
Henry James What Masie Knew Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Henry James The AmbassadorsThe Ambassadors (1903) Lambert Strether is sent from America to Paris to recall Chadwick Newsome, a young man who is reported to be compromising himself by an entanglement with a wicked woman. However, Strether’s mission fails when he is seduced by the social pleasures of the European capital, and he takes Newsome’s side. So a second ambassador is dispatched in the form of the more determined Sarah Pocock. She delivers an ultimatum which is resisted by the two young men, but then an accident reveals unpleasant truths to Strether, who is faced by a test of loyalty between old Europe and the new USA. This edition presents the latest scholarship on James and includes an introduction, notes, selected criticism, a text summary and a chronology of James’s life and times.
Longstaff's Marriage Buy the book at Amazon UK
Longstaff's Marriage Buy the book at Amazon US


Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James web links The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

Henry James web links The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

Red button A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James web links Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

© Roy Johnson 2010


More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories


Filed Under: Henry James Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, study guide, The Golden Bowl, The novel

The Other House

May 6, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Other House (1896) was first conceived as a stage play called The Promise. It was converted into a novel and first appeared in the London Illustrated News, then later as a single-volume novel published by Heinemann in 1896. Almost ten years later it was re-converted into a play. But neither the earlier nor the latest dramatised version ever reached the stage.

The Other House

The decade of the 1890s was a period in which James suffered from the disappointment of his calamitous experiments with the theatre. But he was nothing if not an efficient housekeeper of the materials he had generated. Dramatic plots he had first created for the stage were turned into prose fiction – even though their origins show through in the volume of dialogue which dominates the text.

The Other House is also unusual in James’s oeuvre in that it is a murder mystery. Many of his other works flirt closely with illegal acts and certainly contain many forms of death – but this novel embeds beneath its welter of conversation the deliberate murder of a child. It’s also a murder which goes unpunished.


The Other House – critical commentary

Literary critics have passed generally unfavourable comment on The Other House on the grounds that the muder of a child is inconsistent with the rest of Henry James’s work, and that the psychological motivation of the characters is rather improbable.

This view has two weaknesses, the first of which is that the governess in The Turn of the Screw (written around the same time) frightens to death the child Miles because of her neurotic obssessions. The second is that the person guilty of the crime in The Other House, Rose Armiger, is quite obviously a ruthless and ‘bad heroine’. She comes from a lower class of society than the other characters (with an income of only £200 per annum) and must remove the one obstacle that stands in the way of her snaring Tony.

She and the ‘good heroine’ Jean Martle are not only in love with the same man but deeply antagonistic to each other. She has every reason for wishing to blame the murder onto her rival, and thus eliminate two impediments at the same time.

The only problem, given such a tightly choreographed series of events, is why she should announce her engagement to Dennis Vidal only a few moments before commiting the murder which she hopes will clear her way to securing Tony.

Presumably, one might argue, that rather like many other unscrupulous villains, she wishes to keep all her options open. One might also argue that in declaring her engagement (which she does before Dennis has actually proposed) she thereby deflects suspicion from herself. She would also certainly have had no compunction in ditching Dennis a second time if her plan had been successful.

Certainly the motivation and behaviour of the other characters is consistent and credible. Dennis is fatally ‘smitten’ with Rose. Jean is heroically devoted to Tony and his child. Paul is a naive young man casting around in an adult milieu, propelled by a controlling mother. Dr Ramage acts entirely unethically in covering up the crime, but he does so in order that the good name of an upper-class family (who are also his employers) should not be sullied.

James is no stranger to ambiguous conclusions in his work. Everyone in this story gets off scott free – except that it is assumed that Rose will have to live out her emigrant existance in China with a heavily burdened conscience.

It only remains to observe that given the circumstances obtaining at the conclusion, Jean is actually free to get her man after all.

Dramatic unity

In 1890 Henry James began his ill-fated attempt to succeed in the theatre. The story is now well known. He wrote several plays which successive producers turned down, and when finally his Guy Domeville was staged in 1895 it was greeted on its first night with a 15 minute curtain call of booing and jeering. James gave up the stage, put his dramatic ambitions behind him, and returned to the novel.

But what is not so well known (or observed) is that he retained the plots of these failures, and some of the novels he produced in the wake of this decision are heavily influenced by theatrical conventions and the mechanics of the theatre. The Awkward Age (1898) for instance is a story almost entirely composed of conversations between characters as they visit each others’ drawing rooms.

The Other House (1896) uses the same technique but focuses dramatic interest even more intensely into three ‘acts’ set in only two adjacent and very similar locations. The characters walk on and off ‘stage’ in carefully choreographed sequences, exchanging the information which constitutes the narrative.

Indeed the whole of the first part of the novel (one hundred pages) follows the Aristotelian ideal of unity of time, place, and action. It takes place in one short period of time in one location. It’s a story made for the theatre, and the strategies for getting the players on and off stage are as creakingly evident as the flapping scenery of a painted backdrop.

It is in fact a three act murder mystery, and was first conceived as the scenario for a stage play in 1883 called The Promise, but was turned down by theatrical producers. James certainly made the best of his opportunities for re-cycling the carefully planned dramatic material with which he filled his notebooks.


The Other House – study resources

The Other House The Other House – New York Review Books – Amazon UK

The Other House The Other House – New York Review Books – Amazon US

The Other House The Other House – Everyman Classics – Amazon UK

The Other House The Other House – Everyman Classics – Amazon US

The Other House The Other House – Kindle eBook edition

The Other House The Other House – (unabridged) audio download edition

The Other House The Other House – notes on the text

The Other House The Other House – eBook edition

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Other House


The Other House – plot summary

Book First. A bank is controlled by two families, the Beevers and the Breams who live in two adjacent contry houses separated by a river with a connecting bridge. In Part I of the novel the characters assemble at Bounds, the Bream house. Tony Bream’s wife Julia is ill following the birth of their daughter Effie. She makes her husband promise that in the event of her death he will not re-marry whilst their daughter is still alive. At the same time, Rose Armiage, an impecunious friend of the Breams is due to marry Dennis Vidal, a clerk in the ‘Eastern office’ with prospects, but they quarrel over her attachment to the Breams and break off their engagement. Vidal goes back to China.

The Other HouseBook Second. Events take place four years later at Eastmead, the Beever house, following the death of Julia Bream. Effie’s birthday is being celebrated. Interest is focussed on Paul Beever, a young man who has inherited a half share in the bank and whose mother wishes to see him married – possibly to Jean Martle, Mrs Beever’s cousin. This match is encouraged by both Tony Bream and Rose Armiger in what they claim is Paul’s best interest.

But Jean refuses the offer, saying that she will never be marry anyone. Dennis Vidal on the same day has arrived back from China, much richer, to enquire after Rose, who announces publicly that she will now accept his offer of marriage. During the social flurry of these events the child Effie goes missing, and is discovered dead in the river by Dr Rammage. Her father Tony confesses that he has killed her.

Book Third. Events take place in the same location, immediately following this announcement. A series of characters interview each other, during the course of which it emerges (very obscurely) that Rose has killed the child and tried to put the blame onto Jean, her rival in love for Tony Bream (and as a way of circumventing the promise made to his former wife).

Dr Ramage arranges to cover up the crime, claiming there has been an accident. Dennis takes Rose away to return to China, and Tony is spared any of the scandal for which he was honourably trying to take the blame.


Principal characters
Mrs Adela Beever the ‘queen mother’ of Eastmead
Paul Beever her naive but honest son – inheritor of half the bank
Anthony (Tony) Bream co-owner of the bank
Julia Bream his wife who dies
Effie Bream their child
Jean Martle Mrs Beever’s cousin
Rose Armiger school friend of Bream – ‘engaged’ to Dennis Vidal
Dennis Vidal a ‘rising’ clerk in the Eastern service
Dr Ramage the local physician
Mrs Grantham Rose’s aunt, Julia’s stepmother
Gorham Effie’s nurse
Manning Mrs Beever’s tall parlourmaid
Wilverley the local town
Eastmead Mrs Beever’s house
Bounds the Bream’s house
Plumbury the local railway station

Henry James's Study

Henry James’s study


Further reading

Biographical

The Other House Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

The Other House F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

The Other House Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.


Other works by Henry James

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James Daisy MillerDaisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon UK
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon US

 


The Cambridge Companion to Henry JamesThe Cambridge Companion to Henry James is intended to provide a critical introduction to James’ work. Throughout the major critical shifts of the past fifty years, and despite suspicions of the traditional high literary culture that was James’ milieu, as a writer he has retained a powerful hold on readers and critics alike. All essays are written at a level free from technical jargon, designed to promote accessibility to the study of James and his work.
Henry James Buy the book here


Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James web links The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

Henry James web links The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

Red button A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James web links Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

© Roy Johnson 2011


More on Henry James
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Filed Under: Henry James Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The novel, The Other House

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