American literature Archives

Benito Cereno

August 3, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Benito Cereno (1856) was published in the collection The Piazza Tales which Melville wrote after the disappointing reception of his masterpiece Moby Dick which had appeared in 1851. Like many of his other works Benito Cereno is rich in ambiguities, symbolism, and profound meanings beneath its surface narrative. It’s based upon a documentary record of historical events written by the real Amasa Delano in 1817, but of course Melville dramatises ‘the capture of a ship’ to make it richer in suggestive allusion.

The events of the story are an exercise in sustained irony (a device also used by another mariner-novelist, Joseph Conrad). The first time reader is invited to see circumstances exactly as Captain Amasa Delano encounters them, as he goes from his own ship to offer help to a striken fellow captain. Everything he confronts is baffling, contradictory, and uncertain. He struggles to interpret what he finds, but is hampered by his own inclination to believe the best of everybody he meets. The truth of the situation is only revealed very dramatically at the very last minute.

Benito Cereno – critical commentary

Narrative

Most of Benito Cereno is told from the point of view of Amasa Delano. We encounter the puzzling conditions on board the San Dominick as he does; we have things presented to us as he sees them, and we do not have any other point of view by which to achieve a fictional triangulation to assess what is going on (except in a second or subsequent reading).

Melville’s narrative technique sometimes takes us into Delano’s thoughts, almost in a form of interior monologue, and at times Delano even addresses himself, as if thinking out loud.

The novella is set in 1799 – only a few years after the start of the slave uprising in San Domingo (now Haiti).

Present day readers cannot fail to notice that two of the Spanish crew of the San Dominick are killed by what is now called ‘friendly fire’. That is, when the Americans attack the San Dominick in order to recapture it from the rebel slaves, they mistakenly kill two Spanish sailors who are on their own side in the conflict.

The Novella

Benito Cereno was published as part of The Piazza Tales (1856); it is about 25,000 words long; and it could be regarded as a long short story – but it fulfils many of the criteria for being classed as a novella.

Unity of place

Almost the whole of the story takes place in one location – on board the San Dominick. Captain Delano goes to inspect the ship, climbs aboard alone, and stays there until his boat comes (for the second time) to take him back to the Bachelor’s Delight.

Even the depositions in court (which constitute the ‘explanation’ for what happened) are scenes which took place on board the San Dominick prior to its encounter with the Bachelor’s Delight.

Unity of action

The essential drama of the story unfolds in more or less one continuous action. Moreover, these events are compressed into the shortest possible chronological sequence – less than one whole day. Captain Delano goes on board the San Dominick in the morning, He takes a ‘frugal’ lunch with Captain Cereno. And when his boat ‘Rover’ comes back for the second time to take him back, he returns to the Bachelor’s Delight. The action of the story is concentrated in an almost Aristotelian manner to produce unity of time and action.

Unity of atmosphere

The whole of the narrative is shrouded in mists, becalmed seas, and symbols of mystery and ambiguity. The skies are gray, the San Dominick looks like a ‘white-washed monastery after a thunder-storm’. Nothing is quite what it seems. Delano is constantly baffled by the contradictions and mysteries he encounters. The ship’s figurehead is wrapped in a shroud; Captain Cereno shows no gratitude for being given help on his doomed ship; the slave Atufal is still in chains when others have been released. The tension and sense of menace increase until the moment in the ‘Rover’ that Captain Delano realises what is happening.

Even the events described in the court depositions intensify this atmospheric unity – since they enhance the macabre and grotesque nature of what has taken place aboard the doomed ship.

Unity of character

There are a number of minor named characters in the story – but essentially the whole drama is focussed on three people – Delano, Cereno, and Babo. Captain Delano is the naive, good natured protagonist, seeking to interpret the ambiguities of the world he encounters – and failing to do so at every turn until the truth is finally thrust upon him. Cereno is a good man totally in thrall to an evil power – almost a warning of what Delano’s naivety can lead to if he doesn’t wake up. And Babo is that evil power incarnate. He has been ruthless in taking control of the San Dominick; he has murdered his former ‘owner’, and had his skeleton nailed to the prow with an ironic warning inscribed ‘Follow your leader’. Babo orchestrates events on board the ship, including the menacing shave for Cereno.

The main issue

The event is one from many curious incidents recounted by mariners and others from events at sea. Melville’s work as a novelist draws on many of these recorded events. But these particular events are more than just curious: they embrace large scale political issues. The relationship between America, Europe, and colonialism for instance. America at the time of the story had just fought a war of independence, changing itself from a colony of Britain to an independent state. It had also been engaged in conflicts with England, Spain, and France regarding the slave trade.

The first successful slave uprising had started in San Domingo (now Haiti) in 1791. Slavery was not abolished formally in Great Britain until 1833 and in the USA until 1865, and it is interesting to note that the practice of slavery was first begun in the Spanish colonies around 1500.

So the story does not deal with small scale accidental matters, but forces of great geo-political importance. Benito Cereno, a Spaniard is in charge of a ship whose primary cargo is slaves, ‘owned’ by another Spaniard (Alexandro Aranda).

We do not know where the slaves are from, but it is significant that immediately after seizing control of the San Dominick the rebellion leader Babo wants to be taken back to Senegal – on the west coast of Africa. In other words, he has enough ‘race memory’ to know where he might have originally come from.

Benito Cereno – study resources

Benito Cereno – Oxford World Classics edition

Benito Cereno – Dover Thrift edition

Benito Cereno – Penguin Classics edition

Benito Cereno – Cliffs Notes

Benito Cereno – Norton Critical Editions

Benito Cereno – free eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Benito Cereno – Kindle eBook edition

Herman Melville at Wikipedia

Benito Cereno – plot summary

Amasa Delano is the good-natured captain of the Bachelor’s Delight, an American sealing ship sailing off the western coast of Chile in 1799. His ship is approached by another, the San Dominick, which is drifting aimlessly and appears like a ghost ship. Delano goes to inspect it and discovers a puzzling state of affairs on board. The captain, Don Benito Cereno appears to be in a state of collapse, there are very few crew members on board, and a cargo of ‘negro slaves’ has been let loose to act in a somewhat menacing fashion.

Benito Cereno explains to Delano that most of the crew were lost during terrible storms at sea, which also damaged the ship; but his explanation doesn’t entirely satisfy Delano, who nevertheless sends his boat back to the Bachelor’s Delight to fetch emergency supplies for the survivors.

Throughout Delano’s visit to the San Dominick, Benito Cereno is accompanied by a very attentive negro servant who never leaves his side. Indeed, he is so solicitous of his master’s wellbeing that Delano at one point offers to buy him for his own use.

Delano continues to be disturbed by the inexplicable goings-on around him – such as a group of slaves who are sharpening hatchets, and Benito Cereno’s lack of thanks for the assistance he is being offered. But Delano repeatedly interprets what he see in a positive and generous light.

When the relief supplies have been distributed, Delano sends the boat back to the Bachelor’s Delight, leaving him alone with the members of the San Dominick. He watches Babo shave Benito Cereno, then dines with them, the servant being present throughout. Delano then takes charge of the San Dominick and steers it towards the Bachelor’s Delight in a safe mooring. He invites Benito Cereno to join him on board for coffee – but Benito Cereno refuses.

When a boat arrives to collect him Delano is still puzzled by Cereno’s coldness and lack of response to a generous offer of help. But when Delano gets into the boat, Cereno suddenly leaps from the San Dominick, closely followed by Babo bearing a knife. Delano is convinced they are going to kill him, but it quickly becomes apparent that Babo intends to kill Benito Cereno.

Babo is seized, they regain the Bachelor’s Delight, and then a party of men sets off and recaptures the San Dominick, which is taken to investigative governmental courts in Lima, Peru.

The second part of the story is a sequence of depositions made to the court which record the true sequence of events regarding the San Dominick and the fate of those on board. Starting with a general revolt of the ‘cargo’ of slaves, Babo and his henchman Atufal take charge and command Benito Cereno to sail for Senegal, which is half way round the other side of the world, in West Africa. Members of the Spanish crew are murdered or thrown alive into the sea.

Alexandro Aranda (the ‘owner’ of the slaves) is murdered, and his skeleton is nailed to the front of the ship as a figurehead. After storms and damage to the ship, they arrive at Santa Maria at the same time as the Bachelor’s Delight. Babo arranges the deceptive appearance on board the San Dominick and threatens everybody on board with instant death if they reveal the truth of what has happened. He even puts Atufal in chains as a deceptive ploy, and plans to seize arms and capture the Bachelor’s Delight.

The tribunal recognises Babo as the principal culprit, and sentences him to death. Benito Cereno retreats to a monastery, where he dies three months later.

Principal characters

Amasa Delano	American captain of the Bachelor’s Delight, a sealing and general trading ship
Don Benito Cereno	young captain of the San Dominick, a first-calss Spanish general trading ship
Babo	former slave and ‘attendant’ to Benito Cereno
Don Alexandro Aranda	‘owner’ of the slave ‘cargo’ on the San Dominick
Atufal	Babo’s assistant, a slave and ‘former king’

Theatrical adaptation

Poster for 1965 play by the poet Robert Lowell

Billy Budd

September 28, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Billy Budd is the last (and uncompleted) prose work of Herman Melville. In 1856, disenchanted with the sales and critical reception of his novels, he gave up writing fiction and turned instead to poetry (just as Thomas Hardy was to do fifty years later, for slightly different reasons). Melville became, in the words of Robert Milder, ‘a major nineteenth-century poet and a chronicler of the Victorian crisis of belief to be set alongside Arnold, Tennyson, and Browning’. And yet towards the end of his life it was a concentrated prose narrative to which he returned, writing and re-writing Billy Budd, Sailor so many times it was 1962 before the complete and authoritative version of his text could be assembled for publication.

Billy Budd – critical commentary

The text

Billy Budd was started in 1888 and left unfinished by Melville at his death in 1891. In fact the manuscript wasn’t discovered until 1924 by Raymond. Weaver who was working on papers for the Constable edition of Melville’s Complete Works, Then in 1948 a new revised version appeared, and in 1962 there was a complete re-examination of the materials to produce what is now regarded as the definitive text, complete with its full title – Billy Budd, Sailor: An Inside Narrative.

The Novella

The narrative is about 25,000 words long; and it could be regarded as a long short story – but it is almost universally recognised as a novella – because it fulfils many of the criteria for being classed as such. These are mainly a tight focus on unity of time, place, action, and character.

Unity of place

Apart from the opening sections meditating on mutinies and recounting Billy’s transfer from the Rights of Man, almost the whole of the story takes place in one location – on board the Bellipotent.

Unity of action

Once Billy is on board the Bellipotent the essential drama of the story unfolds in more or less one continuous movement. The action of the story is concentrated in an almost Aristotelian manner to produce a single narrative arc. Billy arrives on board, Claggart denounces him, and Vere condemns him to death. Apart from Melville’s quasi-philosophic meditations on the themes of his story, there are no other issues or sub-plots in the narrative.

Unity of atmosphere

The whole of the story takes place against a backdrop of the absolute nature of naval law and the threat of mutiny against its injustices. Melville meditates on two famous episodes in naval history – the revolts at Spithead and the Nore in 1897, the latter of which resulted in hanging of twenty-nine leaders.

Vere faces a moral dilemma as captain of the ship and arbiter of justice, but he evades the moral ambiguities of his position by reverting to a crude interpretation of traditional maritime law. ‘The father in him, manifested towards Billy thus far in the scene, was replaced by the military disciplinarian’. Even before he summons the drumhead court he declares ‘Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!’

Unity of character

There are a number of minor named characters in the story – but essentially the whole drama is focused on three people – Captain Vere, John Claggart, and Billy Budd.

Captain Vere is kind-hearted and well disposed towards Billy, but when confronted with a choice between humane compassion and the military rule of law, he chooses the latter. He is known as ‘Starry Vere’ because of his dreamy disposition; he is an intellectual, an aristocrat; and as a ship’s captain he has absolute rule. He is therefore in a God-like position of authority over the entire crew.

The text makes it clear that he has the option to delay any proceedings against Billy until rejoining the squadron and reporting the incident to the admiral of the fleet. The senior officers on board agree that this would be the right course of action. But Vere opts for the crude absolute rule of law – and thus precipitates the tragedy.

John Claggart is the embodiment of ‘depravity according to nature’. He encounters Billy, and as his absolute antithesis, immediately takes against him. He accuses him of the worst possible crime in the naval rule book – fomenting mutiny.

Billy is innocent, naively good, young, untainted, and blessed with good looks and a disposition that makes him popular. He is therefore a target of envy to the malicious Claggart. An older, more experienced sailor such as the Dansker knows that such opposing natures will attract each other.

The three characters are locked into an unholy alliance. The spirits of Good and Evil have a God-like character wielding absolute power of decision over their conflict, and the tragedy is precipitated by Vere’s inability to make sufficiently subtle distinctions.

It is easy to see why so many critics have explored the biblical parallels – with Vere the father or God-like figure who has the Satan-like figure of evil present in his sadistic master-at-arms, Claggart. And Billy, the innocent Adam-like figure, must be punished for his transgression of the absolute laws which Vere represents.

Billy Budd – study resources

Billy Budd – Oxford World Classics edition

Billy Budd – Dover Thrift edition

Billy Budd – Penguin Classics edition

Billy Budd – Norton Critical Editions

Billy Budd – free eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Billy Budd – free audioBook version at Project Gutenberg

Billy Budd – Kindle eBook edition

Billy Budd – Unabridged audio download

Herman Melville at Wikipedia

Billy Budd – film trailer

Peter Ustinov, Terence Stamp and Robert Ryan (1962)

Billy Budd – plot summary

William (Billy) Budd is a handsome and popular young sailor, serving on a merchant ship The Rights of Man. He a great favourite of his ship’s master, Captain Graveling. In 1897 however, Billy is impressed into service on the HMS Bellipotent which is commanded by the aristocratic Edward Fairfax (‘Starry’) Vere. Billy is a figure of innocence and good nature. He is an illiterate foundling (an abandoned and presumably illegitimate child) and is popular with other crew members. But the ship’s master-at-arms John Claggart is fuelled by a malevolent impulse to harm Billy. He reports him to the captain, falsely accusing him of fomenting a mutiny.

When the Captain confronts Billy in front of his accuser and asks for an explanation, Billy becomes tongue-tied. He strikes Claggart with a blow that kills him. Although Captain Vere is well disposed towards Billy, he feels he must uphold the rules of military discipline.

A hurried drumhead ‘court’ is summoned and Vere more or less prejudges its conclusions. Billy is found guilty of assaulting a superior officer, and condemned to death. He is hanged the next morning.

Principal characters

William (Billy) Budd	a 21 year old ‘Handsome Sailor’,
Captain Graveling	the commander of the Rights-ofMan
Edward Fairfax Vere	the commander of HMS Bellipotent
John Claggart	master-at-arms on the Bellipotent
Dansker	veteran Danish sailor

Billy Budd – complete opera version

Benjamin Britain (1951)

Daisy Miller

November 4, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Daisy Miller is one of Henry James’s most famous stories. It was first published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1878 by Leslie Stephen (Virginia Woolf’s father) and became instantly popular. It was reprinted several times within a couple of years, and it was even pirated in Boston and New York. On the surface it’s a simple enough tale of a spirited young American girl visiting Europe. She is a product of the New World, but her behaviour doesn’t sit easily with the more conservative manners of her fellow expatriates in Europe. She pushes the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to the limit, and ultimately the consequences are tragic.

the Colosseum in moonlight

Daisy Miller – critical commentary

Story or novella?

Daisy Miller represents a difficult case for making distinctions between the long short story and the novella. Henry James himself called it a ‘short chronicle’, but as a matter of fact it was rejected by the first publisher he sent it to on the grounds that it was a ‘nouvelle’ – that is, too long to be a short story, and not long enough to be a novel.

It should be remembered that the concept of the novella only emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, and publishers were sceptical about its commercial appeal. This was the age of three-volume novels, serial publications, and magazine stories which were written to be read at one sitting.

If it is perceived as a long short story, then the basic narrative line becomes ‘a young American girl is too forthright for her own good in unfamiliar surroundings and eventually dies as a result’. This seems to trivialize the subject matter, and reduce it to not much more than a cautionary anecdote.

The case for regarding it as a novella is much stronger. Quite apart from the element of length (30,000 words approximately) it is a highly structured work. It begins with Winterbourne’s arrival from Geneva, and it ends with his return there. It has two settings – Vevey and Rome. Daisy travels from Switzerland ‘over the mountains’ into Italy and Rome, one of the main centres of the Grand Tour. And it has two principal characters – Winterbourne and Daisy. It also has two interlinked subjects. One is overt – Winterbourne’s attempt to understand Daisy’s character. The second is more complex and deeply buried – class mobility, and the relationship between Europe and America.

Class mobility

Daisy’s family are representatives of New Money. Her father, Ezra B. Miller is a rich industrialist. He has made his money in unfashionable but industrial Schenectady, in upstate New York. Having made that money, the family have wintered in fashionable New York City. This nouveau riche experience has given Daisy the confidence to feel that she can act as she wishes.

But the upper-class social group in which she is mixing have a different set of social codes. They are in fact imitating those of the European aristocracy to which they aspire. In this group a young woman should be chaperoned in public, and she must not even appear to spend too long in the company of an eligible bachelor because this might compromise her reputation.

Daisy has the confidence and the social dynamism provided by her father’s industrial-based money back in Schenectady, but she is denied permanent entry into the upper-class society in which she is mixing because she flouts its codes of behaviour.

Conversely, Winterbourne is attracted to Daisy’s frank and open manner, but he does not understand her – until it is too late. In fact he fails to recognise the clear opportunities she offers him to make a fully engaged relationship, and as she rightly observes, he is ‘too stiff’ to shift from his conservative attitudes. The text does not make clear his source of income, but he obviously feels at home with the upper-class American expatriates, and his return to Geneva at the end of the novella to resume his ‘studies’ underscores his wealthy dilettantism.

He is trapped in his upper-class beliefs in a way that Daisy is not in hers. She has the confidence of having made a transition from one class into another at a higher level. She has a foot in both camps – but her tragedy is that she fails to recognise that she cannot enjoy the benefits of the higher class without accepting the restrictions membership will impose on her behaviour.

Daisy Miller – study resources

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

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

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

Daisy Miller – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Daisy Miller – Wordsworth Classics edition – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – Cliff’s Notes – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – DVD film version – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Daisy Miller – plot summary

Part I. Frederick Winterbourne, an American living in Geneva is visiting his aunt in Vevey, on Lake Leman. In the hotel garden he meets Daisy Miller via her young brother Randolph. He is much taken with her good looks, but puzzled by her forthright conversation. He offers to show her the Castle of Chillon at the end of the lake.

Part II. Mrs Costello, his rather snobbish aunt warns him against the Miller family on the grounds that they lack social cachet. When he visits the castle with Daisy she teases him, offers to take him on as tutor to Rudolph, and is annoyed when he reveals that he must leave the next day. Nevertheless she invites him to visit her in Italy later that year.

Part III. Some weeks later on his arrival in Rome, Winterbourne’s friend Mrs Walker warns him that Daisy is establishing a dubious reputation because of her socially unconventional behaviour. Daisy joins them, and Winterbourne insists on accompanying her when she leaves to join a friend alone in public. He disapproves of the friend Signor Giovanelli who he sees as a lower-class fortune hunter, and Mrs Walker even tries to prevent Daisy from being seen alone in public with men.

Part IV. The American expatriate community resent Daisy’s behaviour, and Mrs Walker then snubs her publicly at a party they all attend. Winterbourne tries to warn Daisy that she is breaking the social conventions, but she insists that she is doing nothing wrong or dishonourable. He defends Daisy’s friendship with Signor Giovanelli to her American critics. Finally, Winterbourne encounters Daisy with Giovanelli viewing the Colosseum by moonlight. Winterbourne insists that she go back to the hotel to avoid a scandal. She goes under duress, but she has in fact contracted malaria (‘Roman Fever’) from which she dies a few days later. At the funeral Giovanelli reveals to Winterbourne that he knew that Daisy would never have married him. Winterbourne realises that he has made a mistake in his assessment of Daisy, but he ‘nevertheless’ returns to live in Geneva.

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Daisy Miller – principal characters

Frederick Forsyth Winterbourne	a young (27) American expatriate of independent means who purports to be studying in Geneva
Ezra B. Miller	a wealthy American industrial businessman (who does not appear in the story)
Mrs Miller	his wife, who is a hypochondriac
Annie P. (‘Daisy’) Miller	their spirited daughter
Randolph C. Miller	her outspoken nine-year-old brother
Eugenio	tall and distinguished courier and factotum to the Millers in Europe
Mrs Costello	Winterbourne’s snobbish aunt in Vevey – a ‘widow of fortune’
Mrs Walker	Winterbourne’s friend in Rome
Sig Giovanelli	Daisy’s friend in Rome – a solicitor

Daisy Miller – film adaptation

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich (1974)

Starring Cybill Shepherd and Barry Brown

Daisy Miller – further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

William T. Stafford (ed), James’s Daisy Miller: The story, the play, the critics, New York: Scribner, 1963.

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

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

Other works by Henry James

Washington 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.
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The 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.
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The 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.
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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.

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

Edith Wharton biography

July 8, 2011 by Roy Johnson

writer, traveller, socialite, gardener, interior designer

1862. Edith Newbold Jones born into wealthy ‘old money’ family in New York. Her childhood nickname was ‘Pussy Jones’.

1866. Following depreciation on the US Dollar after the Civil war, family move to tour and live in Europe for economic reasons. They live in Paris, Rome, Germany, and Spain. Edith learns French, Italian and German. She inherits a strong sense of place and visual memory from her father.

1872. Family returns to live in New York city, spending the summers in Newport. Edith has a difficult, estranged, and rivalrous relationship with her mother, who has no sympathy with Edith’s artistic and imaginative interests. Edith relieves her solitude by reading in her father’s library, where she becomes acquainted with classics of modern French, Italian, English literature.

1877. First poems published in Atlantic Monthly.

1879. Successful debut into New York society at 17 years old.

1880. The family returns to live in Europe – London, Paris, and Venice. Edith strongly influenced by Ruskin and his concepts of art and architecture.

1882. Death of her father in Cannes. Edith and her mother return to New York.

1885. Edith marries Edward (Teddy) Wharton who does not share her intellectual tastes. It is a marriage for which she is singularly unprepared. They set up home at ‘Penridge Cottage’ (a lavish house) in Newport, and socialize amongst rich New Yorkers (Van Allens, Astors, Vanderbildts) giving parties, boating, and engaging in fashionable archery contests.

1888. Whartons go on lavish Mediterranean cruise paid for with a legacy.

1889. Edith’s stories and poems began to appear in Scribner’s Magazine. She begins to suffer from attacks of asthma, nausea, and fatigue

1892. The Whartons acquire their own first home at Land’s End in Newport – another large-scale house with views on the Atlantic.

1893. French poet and writer Paul Bourget arrives in Newport with a letter of introduction and becomes lifelong friend. He introduces her to his intellectual friends in Paris. She makes intellectual friendship with Edgerton Wynthrop, who becomes her mentor. Meets architect Ogden Codman and commissions him to re-furbish her house at Land’s end.

1897. She co-writes and publishes with Ogden Codman The Decoration of Houses, which is immediately successful and establishes her reputation as an interior designer with a taste for modern style, removing the clutter of the Victorian period from homes. She promotes Codman’s reputation and becomes virtually the project manager of his commissions.

1898. Suffers a nervous collapse and is advised to take a rest-cure by the same doctor who treated Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

1899. Publishes The Greater Inclination, a collection of short stories.

1901. Publishes Crucial Instances a second collection of short stories. Death of her mother in Paris. Edith inherits $90,000 and immediately begins building a huge house (forty-two rooms) in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Edith Wharton’s house – The Mount

1902. Scribners publish The Valley of Indecision, her first novel, which re-creates eighteenth century Italy.

1903. Travels in Europe, and writes Italian Villas and their Gardens. Meets Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) and painter John Singer Sargeant.

1904. Begins friendship with Henry James. She earns more from her writing than he does. They travel together in motor cars named after George Sand’s lovers. The Descent of Man and Other Stories.

1905. The House of Mirth her next novel dealing with modern New York, becomes a best-selling success, following serialization in Scribner’s Magazine.

1906. Edith and her husband spend time in England with Henry James.

1907. Whartons travel through France with Henry James, where Edith meets London Times correspondent W. Morton Fullerton. She starts writing her secret ‘love diary’.

Edith Wharton motoring with Henry James

1908. Edith begins an affair with Fullerton and is passionately moved for the first time in her life. She confides in Henry James, who advises her to ‘sit tight’.

1909. Meets art critic Bernard Berenson in Paris, and for first time does not return to spend the summer at her house, The Mount.

1911. The affair with Fullerton comes to an end, but they remain friends. She establishes an American expatriate salon in Paris and mixes with many cosmopolitan artists – Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide, Serge Diaghilev, and Walter Sickert. Close friendships with Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James and Comtesse Anna de Noailles. Publishes her novella Ethan Frome which she says ends her period of apprenticeship as a writer.

1912. Edith sells her house The Mount and the same year is formally divorced from her husband Teddy. Publishes The Reef.

1913. Publishes The Custom of the Country.

1914. At the outbreak of the first world war, Edith sets up workshops for working-class women whose husbands have been conscripted. Travels around battlefront in her car with Walter Beery, and writes pro-French articles for the American press. Engages in fund-raising efforts amongst her friends

1916. Death of her friend Henry James. She is awarded the Legion of Honour.

1917. Publishes novella Summer.

1918. Purchases eighteenth-century house, Pavilion Colombie, outside Paris. Restores the house and develops its seven acres of formal gardens

1920. Buys and restores Chateau Sainte-Claire and its gardens in Hyeres, southern Provence. Publishes The Age of Innocence. Begins writing ‘Beatrice Palmato’ – a work about incest.

1921. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence. A great deal of her time is spent developing the extensive gardens on her two estates in Paris and Hyeres.

1923. Makes her final visit to the USA where she is awarded honorary doctorate at Yale university – the first woman to be so honoured. Increasingly reliant on servants – at a time when in the post-war era when working ‘in-service’ was less popular.

1925. Publishes The Writing of Fiction.

1926. Charters yacht for Mediterranean cruise. Visits Bernard Berenson at I Tatti.

1929. Publishes Hudson River Bracketed.

1930. Collection of short stories, Certain People appears.

1933. Another collection of short fiction, Human Nature appears.

1934. Publishes her reminiscences, A Backward Glance. Begins work on a final novel, The Buccaneers, which is never published.

1937. Dies of heart failure and is buried at Versailles.

More on Edith Wharton
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Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life

July 6, 2011 by Roy Johnson

writer, traveller, socialite, gardener, interior designer

Edith Wharton is a writer whose life and work spans the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – rather like Joseph Conrad, Henry James, and even Thomas Hardy. Most of her published output was produced after 1900, yet she represents the mores and values of ‘old money’ upper class America confronted by the economic and social challenges of the New Century. Not that she had to endure any of its hardships and uncertainties. She was born into a very rich family and when the dollar lost value after the end of the Civil War she spent much of her childhood living in France and Italy .She learned foreign languages, inherited a keen visual memory and an appreciation of sense of place from her father, whose private library of classics provided the materials of her education.

Most of her younger life was spent oscillating between lavish homes in New York and fashionable retreats on the Eastern seaboard in summer months. She was a precocious youngster, and had poetry and stories published whilst still in her teens. As a popular Young Thing of her very privileged set, she was quickly successful in acquiring a rich and handsome husband. However, Teddy Wharton was an outdoor pursuits type who did not share her intellectual aspirations. They set up home in New York, but when she came into a very generous inheritance she immediately bought a huge ‘summer house’ at Land’s End, Newport. She commissioned architect Ogden Codman to refurbish the house, then co-wrote with him what became the first of her many best-sellers – The Decoration of Houses.

She lived a rather independent life and had friendships with a number of men and women. However, when she met the London Times journalist W. Morton Fullerton in Paris, she felt for the first time in her life she had located a soul mate. They became lovers, even though he was bisexual and had a rather disreputable past. The affair lasted three years, after which she divorced her husband and began to travel regularly in Europe with her friend Henry James, who was an admirer of her writing. She published her first major novel The House of Mirth in 1905, and thereafter produced a healthy output of travel writing, novels, and short stories.

Edith Wharton’s house – The Mount

She established an American expatriate salon in Paris and mixed with a cosmopolitan selection of artists and intellectuals, including Jean Cocteau, Serge Diaghilev, Andre Gide, and Walter Sickert. When the first world War broke out she quickly threw herself into providing employment for working-class French women whose husbands had been conscripted. She toured the front lines of battle in her chauffeur driven limousine and wrote accounts supporting the French war effort – for which she was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1916.

After the war she established two houses and their gardens – one on the outskirts of Paris, and the other at Hyéres, in southern Provence. These properties were used as bases from which she continued to tour Europe and the Mediterranean. She became an expert on garden design (rather like Vita Sackville-West) although she never did any of the actual gardening herself. She continued to publish novels, novellas, and her memoirs right up to her death in 1937.

Eleanor Dwight’s account of Wharton’s life isn’t a biography in the conventional sense of tracing her movements in chronological order. Instead, it takes main issues and places – New York, Italy, the motor car, and the war – as a framework on which to build the larger picture. Indeed, Wharton’s affair with Fullerton is mentioned in three brief lines between several pages of rapture about her garden designs.

Dwight also takes the common liberty of paraphrasing and interpreting Wharton’s fiction as a guide to understanding the conflicts in her life – a very dubious practice which also omits to point out how funny her writing can be. But on balance it makes for a very readable narrative, and as a lavishly illustrated study, the period photographs add both charm and depth to her study.

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Eleanor Dwight, Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life, New York: Harry N Abrams, new edition, 1999, pp.296, ISBN: 0810927950

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Ethan Frome

July 12, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Edidth Wharton wrote the first version of Ethan Frome in French, as an exercise for her tutor and gave it the title Hiver (1907). It consisted of only a few pages, and was abandoned unfinished. But she returned to the story in 1911 and added the structural device of the outer narrator. Some people see the story as a reflection of Wharton’s own life, since it was around this time that she brought to an end both her own unhappy marriage and her love affair with W. Morton Fullerton. However, it is also possible to see in the story elements of her much earlier novel The House of Mirth (1905).

Edith Wharton

She regarded the novella as a significant turning point in her career as a writer – the end of her ‘apprenticeship’ as she called it. And for both its form and its brevity it has become a classic in the teaching of American literature, though it’s not so well known in Britain and the rest of Europe. However, it is an amazingly powerful story, and is told in a stark stripped-down style which suits both its subject and its setting of poor New England farming country.

Ethan Frome – critical commentary

Structure

The bulk of the narrative concerns events which take place within the space of only two or three days. But the story is ‘framed by a brief introduction and afterward which reveal the state of affairs twenty years later. The dramatic effect of this framing device is to both create narrative tension and to emphasise the fact that the events of these few days have an effect which lasts for the remainder of the characters’ lives.

In the introduction an unnamed narrator (an engineer or project manager) stays in the local town whilst he is working nearby. He learns something of Ethan’s background from the locals, and hires him as a driver. One night they are cut off by a snow storm, and Ethan offers him accommodation for the night. This is related in first person narrative mode.
Part two is a flashback in third person omniscient narrative mode recounting events that took place twenty years earlier. This includes Ethan’s unhappy marriage to Zeena, his passion for Mattie, and the events leading up to their fateful sledge ride.
The afterward returns in first person mode to the morning after the introduction, in which the tragic consequences of the sledge ride are revealed to the narrator.

Narrative

The narrator claims that he has pieced together the story from scraps of information related to him by the local inhabitants. However, much of the story’s substance consists of the thoughts and feelings of Ethan and Mattie which only they could have known. Ethan is characterised as a taciturn and remote person who has been damaged by his life experiences, and the implication of the tale is that Mattie has been reduced to an almost vegetative state: so it is very unlikely that they would have given the narrator an account of their personal lives.

This is a weakness of narrative logic, but it is amply compensated by the concentrated drama of the main story itself.

The novella

You might wonder why Ethan Frome is generally regarded as a novella rather than a long short story. It’s because it possesses all the classic features of a novella.

Unity of place
Everything in the story takes place in Starkfield. The narrator arrives there; the events of twenty years earlier all took place there; and all the characters concerned are still there when the story ends.

Unity of action
The essential drama of the story unfolds in more or less one continuous action. Ethan realises he is attracted to Mattie – and so does Zeena. He enjoys his chaste dinner with her. And Zeena returns the following day with her plan to break up the relationship – at which Ethan rebels and takes Mattie on the fateful sledge ride.

These events are compressed into the shortest possible chronological sequence – which is framed by the narrator’s introduction and conclusion.

Unity of atmosphere
The events take place in winter, and the grim cold blanketting of snow remains present throughout as a unifying feature and a reminder of the emotionally life-supressing forces at work in the story.

Unity of character
There are a number of named characters in the story, but all of the drama is focussed on the three principals – Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie – who are locked together in a desperate power struggle.

They are locked into a triangle of rivalry at the start of events. Both Ethan and Mattie wish to escape from the bitter dominance of Zeena. But the power nexus is given an ironic twist be the events of the denouement: both Ethan and Mattie become entirely dependent on Zeena, who is forced to look after them.

Use of symbols
The persistent presence of cold and snow reflects the sexual repression which pervades the entire story.

Ethan’s house has lost part of its previous shape, just as he has become permanently injured as a result of the big ‘smash-up’ in the sledge ride.

Zeena has a glass bowl (a wedding present) which she never uses – but it is broken during the meagre supper that Ethan and Mattie share on their evening together.

The main issue
A short story is often a small incident from life which illuminates a character, or presents a moment of revelation. But a novella deals with a subject which stands for a much larger and all-important statement about the larger issues of life. It might contain a similar number of characters, but they represent more universal forces at work.

Ethan Frome deals with the entire adult lives of its three principal characters. The actions they take in the few crucial days which form the crux of the story turn out to determine the rest of their lives.

Ethan Frome – study resources

Ethan Frome – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Ethan Frome – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Ethan Frome – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – Spark Notes – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – York Notes – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – free eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Ethan Frome – free audioBook version at Project Gutenberg

Ethan Frome – DVD of 1993 movie adaptation – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – DVD of 1993 movie adaptation – Amazon US

Ethan Frome – Kindle eBook edition

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – plot summary

Ethan Frome is a poor working farmer who lives in a small remote town in Massachusetts. He exists in a state of near poverty with his wife Zeena (Zenobia), a grim, prematurely aged woman who makes hypochondria her hobby and his life a misery. Ethan has travelled as far as Florida and has intellectual aspirations, but he has never been able to develop or fulfil them. Living with them as an unpaid household help is Zeena’s cousin, Mattie Silver, a young woman who has lost her parents.

When Ethan escorts Mattie home from the local dance, he realises that he is deeply moved by her presence. This is something his wife is aware of, and she plans to be rid of the girl. When Zeena goes away overnight to consult a doctor, Ethan plans to enjoy a rare evening together with Mattie. They eat a humble supper together, and nothing except good feelings pass between them.

Next day Zeena returns to announce that she has ‘complications’ that will require a full time servant who she has already hired, and that Mattie must leave. Ethan is horrified by the prospect and makes plans to leave Zeena, but realises that he hasn’t the money or the prospects to support Mattie.

Nevertheless, he defies his wife and insists on driving Mattie to the station. On the way there he and Mattie declare their love for each other. Before the train arrives he fulfils a promise to take her sledging. After one very exhilarating run down a dangerous slope, Mattie proposes a suicide pact so that they will spend their last moments together. Ethan agrees, but instead of being united in death, they are both horribly injured.

Ethan and Mattie spend the rest of their lives in the care of Zeena.

first edition 1911

Principal characters

I	an unnamed outer narrator who works in engineering
Ethan Frome	a poor farmer with aspirations for a better life
Zeena (Zenobia)	his grim, prematurely aged wife, who makes a career of hypochondria
Harmon Gow	a Starkfield resident
Mrs Ned Hale	the narrator’s landlady
Michael Eady	Irish store owner
Denis Eady	his son, who dances with Mattie
Mattie Silver	Zeena’s cousin
Andrew Hale	a builder
Jotham Powell	a hired hand who does work for Ethan

Film adaptation

1993 film adaptation starring Liam Neeson

Other works by Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence (1920) is Edith Wharton’s most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War. It’s a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s. Newland Archer is charming, tactful, and enlightened. He accepts society’s standards and abides by its rules, but he also recognizes its limitations. His engagement to the impeccable May Welland assures him of a safe and conventional future – until the arrival of May’s cousin Ellen Olenska puts all his plans in jeopardy. Independent, free-thinking, and scandalously separated from her husband, Ellen forces Archer to question the values and assumptions of his narrow world. As their love for each other grows, Archer has to decide where his ultimate loyalty lies.
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The Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.
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The House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.
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Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton at Fantastic Fiction
A compilation which purports to be a complete bibliography, arranged as novels, collections, non-fiction, anthologies, short stories, letters, and commentaries – but is largely links to book-selling sites, which however contain some hidden gems.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

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Fordham Castle

November 25, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Fordham Castle (1904) is at less than 10,000 words a very short story by James’s usual standards. It comes from his late period and first appeared in Harper’s Magazine in 1904. When he first recorded the germ of the idea for this tale in his notebooks (or the donnée as he liked to call it) it was ‘the American phenomenon of the social suppression of the parents’. That is, young Americans climbing the social ladder by concealing their true origins.

In his first thoughts the emphasis was on two daughters who wish to deny the existence of their mother. So it is interesting to note that by the time he came to write the story, attention had switched to the male protagonist – but James has retained the idea of denying somebody’s existence by taking up a new identity. And he retains the idea of ‘death’ in a metaphoric sense.

Longford Castle – Wiltshire

Fordham Castle – critical commentary

The most interesting element of this rather light piece of entertainment is the patterning of identities. All the principal characters have two names. Abel Taker is masquerading as C.P.Addard; his wife renames herself Mrs Sherrington Reeve; Mrs Magaw is registered at the hotel as Mrs Vanderplank, and her daughter Mattie Magaw will lose the surname she dislikes to become Lady Dunderton.

It could be argued that the story deals with a theme of people creating new identities for themselves. But Mrs Taker is acting outside the events of the narrative; we do not know if her actions are effective or not. Mrs Magaw only adopts her new persona temporarily. And Mattie secures her fiancé under her real name and will only change it following her marriage. Abel Taker however, volunteers at the end of the story to adopt his new identity of C.P.Addard, leaving his ‘old’ self dead. He is taking a leap into the metaphysical void. If we are to take its premise seriously, it’s certainly an extreme case of people seeking upward social mobility.

Fordham Castle – study resources

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

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

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Fordham Castle – read the story on line

The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his work – Amazon UK

The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his work – Amazon US

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Fordham Castle – plot summary

Abel Taker a middle-aged American has agreed to separate from his wife so that she can get on in London society. He is living in a hotel on Lake Geneva under the assumed name of C.P.Addard. There he meets Mrs Magaw, an older American woman who is living under the name of Mrs Vanderplank. She is doing this for the sake of her daughter Mattie who thinks the family name is spoiling her chances of social advancement.

Both Abel and Mrs Magaw speak of their previous names and identities as people who are now dead. Meanwhile Mrs Taker, who is staying at Fordham Castle in Wiltshire, has done the same thing and has now become Mrs Sherrington Reeve.

Mattie Magaw is also staying at the Castle and becomes engaged to Lord Dunderton. Now that she has made her social mark she invites her mother there. Mrs Magaw leaves for England and invites Abel to go with her. However, he doubts that he will receive a similar invitation from his wife, declines, and resumes his status as a ‘dead person’.

Principal characters

Abel F. Taker	middle-aged American – also C.P. Addard
Mrs Sue Taker	his wife – also Mrs Sherrington Reeve
Mrs Magaw	an American woman – also Mrs Vanderplank
Mattie Magaw	her daughter, who is due to become Lady Dunderton
Madame Massin	hotel proprietress

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

The 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.
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Henry James – web links

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

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.

More tales by James
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Four Meetings

November 24, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Four Meetings (1877) is a simple but very touching story which hovers ambiguously between a comic and a tragic tone. As so frequently in James’s work, there is an ‘International’ element to the tale – in this case the powerful attraction which European culture had for Americans. The tension between pathos and bitter irony make it difficult to tell if the story is meant to be taken as mild satire or a form of grim and off-colour humour. It is not unlike his treatment of the same subject in the later story Europe

Four Meetings – critical commentary

Dramatic tension

This tale has some of the tensions and reversals of expectation that characterise the typical late nineteenth century story – the sort of tale that might have been written by Guy de Maupassant, whose work Henry James knew well.

Part I. Caroline Spencer’s innocent enthusiasm for European culture is obviously set up as the principal source of dramatic tension in part one of the tale. We want to know if her expectations will be realized when she finally makes the trip to Europe.

Part II. Almost immediately in part two however, this subject is replaced by the dramatic news of her naive belief in her cousin, who she has never met before but has entrusted with all her money. When the cousin turns up, his appearance and behaviour fail to dispel suspicion – especially since he still has some disturbing news to impart to Caroline.

Part III. When the piece of news is imparted it makes matters even worse. He needs her money to pay his bad debts, and the student’s pathetic tale of secret marriage to a disenfranchised ‘Countess’ (relayed to us whilst he tucks into a meal) is quite clearly a fabrication of some sort. Yet Caroline accepts it as the truth, believes she will be repaid, and is prepared to sacrifice her own interests for those of her dissolute relative. This is a peak in the narrative arc of the story, but there is a grim further twist yet to come.

Part IV. Having assumed that the ‘Countess’ was a fiction, we are surprised to learn that there actually is a wife (now a widow) who is continuing to live off Caroline’s generosity. She is a vulgar slattern who gives herself airs and graces; the money has never been returned; and Caroline has lost all interest in visiting Europe.

Dramatic structure

There are four meetings, but they are arranged in an interesting and highly structured pattern. The first takes place in New England, then there is a gap of three years. The second and third meetings take place in Le Havre within a few hours of each other. There is then a gap of another five years before the fourth meeting takes place, back once again in New England.

Caroline Spencer goes from being a naive and ‘almost like a little girl’ at the start of the story, until at the end (eight years later) ‘She was much older; she looked tired and wasted’.

It’s also interesting to note that at the beginning of the story Caroline Spencer is already dead. The narrator is describing their four meetings retrospectively.

The International theme

Henry James wrings every possible dramatic variation out of his fascination with American and Europe. In Four Meetings both his principal charcters are Europhiles. The narrator has travelled widely and recorded his impressions in photograph albumns. He knows foreign languages, and has beena nightly visitor to the French theatre. Caroline Spencer is actually even more deeply steeped in its culture, remembering Byron’s lines from The Prisoner of Chillon which he can not. But her enthusiasm is a form of romantic dream, and such is its intensity that the narrator suggests that it is a form of American madness:

You’ve the great American disease, and you’ve got it ‘bad’—the appetite, morbid and monstrous, for colour and form, for the picturesque and the romantic at any price … we have before us the beautiful old things we’ve never seen at all, and when we do at last see them—if we’re lucky!—we simply recognise them. What experience does is merely to confirm and consecrate our confident dream.

The narrator is able to live at ease with his version of the ‘disease’, but Caroline’s dream is shattered as a result of her gullibility in lending money to someone she hardly knows, but who is significantly a fellow American.

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Four Meetings – study resources

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

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

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

Four Meetings – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Four Meetings – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Four Meetings – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Four Meetings – read the book on line

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his works – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Four Meetings – plot summary

An unnamed narrator meets Caroline Spencer on four separate occasions. He is a well-travelled and sophisticated Europhile. She is a simple spinster with a passion for European culture who has saved from her earnings as a schoolteacher to finance her own version of the Grand Tour.

Part I. At the first meeting in New England, the narrator shows her his albumns of travel photographs, which arouses her enthusiasm to fever pitch. She regards Europe as the centre of all culture, and a visit there would be the fulfillment of her dreams.

Part II. Three years later he meets her again by chance in Le Havre, where she has just arrived from America for her much-anticipated visit. However, she has given all her travellers cheques to her cousin (who she has never met before) to exchange for Francs before they go on to Paris, where he is studying art. The narrator fears that she will never see the cousin again, but he does turn up and reveals himself as an unappetizing bohemian.

Part III. A few hours later, fearing that the student might take advantage of his cousin’s lack of experience, the narrator goes to check on Caroline before her train leaves for Paris. He discovers that the student has revealed himself to be heavily in debt, and she has given him all her money. But he is also married to a Countess and will repay the money as soon as he is able. Caroline sails back to America the same day – having spent thirteen hours on European soil.

Part IV. Five years later the narrator is back in New England where he first met Caroline, and decides to call on her. She is living in frugal circumstances, has aged terribly, and she is acting as servant to the ‘Countess’ who has come to live with her following the death of her cousin. The money has never been repaid, and it is quite clear that the Countess is a vulgar fraud. As the narrator reflects, she was ‘no more a Countess than I was a Caliph’.

Principal characters

I	the unnamed first-person narrator
Latouche	his friend in New England
Miss Caroline Spencer	a single schoolteacher
—	her unnamed cousin who lives in Paris ‘studying’ art
The ‘Countess’	the cousin’s wife
Mr Mixter	an untalented student of French with the Countess

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

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

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.

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie

November 17, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie first appeared in Cornhill Magazine in 1900 – which was a remarkably fertile period for Henry James in terms of his production of stories, or ‘tales’ as he called them. It was a year which saw the publication of The Abasement of the Northmores, Maud-Evelyn, The Third Person, The Great Good Place, The Tone of Time, The Tree of Knowledge, and the story which is widely regarded as his finest – The Beast in the Jungle. James produced all of these (and more) in addition to working on his next novel, The Sacred Fount (1901).

Poughkeepsie – New York State

Miss Gunton is a light-hearted variation on the Daisy Miller story. A young American woman is in Europe surrounded by its ancient rituals, finding them at odds with her own inclination to frank and democratic equalities. Unusually for Henry James, it’s quite a short work at 4,000 words and very light-hearted in tone. The worst that happens is that an aristocrat is annoyed to find that she has unnecessarily lowered herself to acknowledge a commoner. No people were hurt in the writing of this story.

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – critical commentary

Henry James like other novelists often deals with issues of class and money in his works, and to these ingredients he frequently adds what is called his ‘International theme’. That is, the contrasts, differences, and ambiguities between American and European society – both of which he knew at first hand. The emphasis he puts on psychological drama in his work often obscures these elements, but it is noticeable how they permeate even this short and relatively light-hearted story.

Class

Lily comes from a provincial city in New York State – so obscure that Lady Champer has never even heard of it. Yet Poughkeepsie became the second capital city of the state (after Albany) and was a prosperous industrial centre. Lily’s grandfather is in business there, and it is his financial support which provides for Lily in her travels. She is therefore bourgeois – new money in class terms.

But the Prince as his title implies is from an aristocratic Italian family. Lady Champer describes it as ‘a very great house, of tremendous antiquity, fairly groaning under the weight of ancient honours’. That is they have inherited wealth – though this does not necessarily mean that they are very rich.

Lily cannot see why the Prince’s family should not treat her as an equal. That’s because she comes from a ‘self-made’ class. But the Princess cannot move from their tradition of requiring deference from people of a lower position on the social scale. Indeed, the Prince believes that by marrying Lily he will be ‘pulling her up’ in society.

These are common tensions in what is called ‘upwards social mobility’. It is normally very difficult to move upwards in terms of social class – except via marriage or sometimes education. But Lily has two bargaining counters: she is strikingly beautiful and she is rich. These were issues that James explored in much greater depths in works such as The Golden Bowl which he began writing only a couple of years later.

Money

Coming from a ‘self-made’ business class, Lily is the recipient of its wealth. She is supported by her grandfather, and can ‘draw’ financial support from him whenever she feels the need. She pays her own way, and can therefore feel that she owes deference to no one. It is interesting to note that the aristocratic Lady Champer thinks of Lily’s grandfather as an impediment to her chances of social success – when the reverse turns out to be the case.

The Prince knows that he is marrying a rich woman, but his problem is that he does not know how rich she is. Had she been from the aristocratic class, his family would have access to information of this kind. But because she is both from America and of an unknown heritage (‘a young alien of vague origin’) they have no way of knowing the extent of the family’s wealth. His mother the Princess disapproves of the marriage on these grounds alone.

We do not know how wealthy the Prince’s family is, but he is noticeably worried about the potential expense of an American wedding. He fears that ‘A vast America, arching over his nuptials, bristling with expectant bridesmaids and underlaying their feet with expensive flowers, stared him in the face’.

It is in fact almost unthinkable that a genuinely aristocratic dynasty would permit marriage into its ranks without a thorough preliminary investigation of family connections, sources of income, and any potential skeletons in cupboards.

The secondary twist in the tale – after Lily’s marriage to Mr Bramsby – is that she inherits her grandfather’s wealth, and there is a lot of it – ‘an extraordinary number of dollars’ as Lady Champer explains.

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – study resources

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

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

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – text, preface, and notes

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – read the story on line

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – plot summary

Lily Gunton is a young American woman touring Europe in the company of a chaperone. She has attracted the admiration of a Roman prince and has travelled to London, waiting to see if he will follow her. She reveals to her English confidante Lady Champer her intention of drawing the Prince all the way back to America.

The Prince arrives in London, proposes to Lily, and she agrees to marry him. However, she has not met his mother, and a conflict in protocols arises between them. Lily thinks she should be invited to meet the Princess, who in her turn believes that Lily should request such an audience. Lily thinks she is doing the family an honour in marrying their son, and they think they are doing her a favour by accepting her into such a distinguished family. .

There is a stand off, and in the end Lily calls their bluff by returning to America. The Princess does send an invitation, but it arrives too late, Some weeks later news reaches London that Lily has married into the American family with whom she travelled back to the USA.

Principal characters

Lily Gunton	a young American woman travelling in Europe
Mr Gunton	Lily’s wealthy grandfather in Poughkeepsie (NY)
Lady Champer	a baronet’s widow living in London
The Prince	Lily’s admirer, from an aristocratic Roman family
The Princess	his mother
Mrs Brine	Lily’s chaperone
Adam P. Bramsby	the man who Lily marries in America

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

Daisy 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.
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Henry James – web links

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

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.

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Pandora

November 5, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Pandora (1884) is a story which combines three topics which regularly fascinated Henry James and are present in many of his tales and novels. Foremost is the relationship between Europe and America – his ‘International’ theme. Next comes the ‘new woman’ who emerged in America towards the end of the nineteenth century and behaved in a socially more liberated manner. And third is the social and moral tensions which arise in cases of class mobility – though James doesn’t always discuss this issue explicitly.

Nineteenth century transatlantic steamer

Its textual history throws an interesting light onto the publishing of fiction in the late nineteenth century. It first appeared in two instalments of the New York Sun on 1 and 8 June 1884. That’s a week between each part of the story – rather like a television drama today. It was then reprinted twice in book form, collected with other Henry James stories. This is a form of publication almost unthinkable today. Then, when James was honoured with the multi-volume New York edition of his collected works, it appeared again, heavily revised.

Pandora – critical commentary

The ‘new woman’

James presents Pandora as an example of the ‘new type’ of woman, the ‘self-made girl’ – but she is in fact a product of upward social mobility – an arriviste. She comes from a family in trade, not people of inherited wealth or ‘old money’ upper-class society to which she aspires. She is intent on prising the family away from their provincial origins of Utica in upper New York state, of which Mrs Dangerfield observes “You can’t have a social position in Utica any more than you can have an opera box”. In fact she adds that Pandora (by Mrs Dangerfield’s own standards) does not even have a ‘social position’. Yet she is on the way to acquiring one.

It is interesting to note that her fiancé Bellamy is also originally from the same upstate town, and he too started out in ‘some kind of business’ with not enough income to offer her marriage. They have been engaged since Pandora was sixteen. But he too has managed to climb upwards socially with his appointment to a diplomatic position in government.

To reinforce the argument that this is a class mobility issue, there is a strong suggestion that Bellamy has secured his appointment via Pandora’s influence during her conversation with the president of the ‘the world’s largest country’ [James’s words]. At the social gathering where she meets the president she takes her leave of him by saying “Well now, remember, I consider it a promise”.

Narrative structure

The story is neatly divided into two parts – each of which reflects the other. In the first part Vogelstein gets to know Pandora whilst on board a ship. When it docks she is due to be met by her fiancé Bellamy, but he is unavailable. In the second part they are again on board a river boat, but this time Bellamy does make his appearance to claim his bride-to-be.

At the start of part one, Vogelstein has just been appointed to the German legation in Washington – and so has travelled from Europe to America. At the end of part two, Bellamy has been appointed as ambassador to Holland – and will therefore be travelling from America to Europe to take up his post.

Inter-textuality

This is very much a conscious variation on the theme of the ‘new type’ of woman from James’s earlier success, Daisy Miller – so much so that he has his protagonist and narrator Vogelstein actually reading the story on board ship whilst journeying to New York – in a German pocketbook edition. He comments on the characters in the story and draws comparisons between Daisy and Pandora, as well as between Randolph Miller and Pandora’s brother, who he sees as what the young Randolph might have grown up to become.

there was for Vogelstein at least an analogy between young Mr.Day and a certain small brother … who was, in the Tauchnitz volume, attributed to that unfortunate maid. This was what the little Madison [Randolph] would have grown up to at nineteen, and the improvement was greater than might have been expected

Name and title

The Pandora of classical Greek mythology was the name for the first ‘all gifted’ woman, created by Zeus (King of the Gods) for the deliberate confusion of man. She was sent as a wife to Epimetheus with a box which she was forbidden to open. When she disobeyed this injunction, she released all the evils of the world. Only Hope remained inside the box.

It is not difficult to see these meanings linked to the repeated appearance of strong women in James’s stories as predatory creatures who might threaten men who have a fear of marriage. Vogelstein certainly perceives Pandora as an aggressive female, putting her into that category with other women he has encountered ‘they were apt to advance, like this one, straight upon their victim’.

It is also perhaps worth noting that Pandora is not her real but her ‘pet’ name. Just like the socially mobile Daisy Miller, whose real name is Annie P. Miller, Pandora is shedding part of her provincial identity as she climbs upwards. We do not learn her real name.

Pandora – study resources

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

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

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

Pandora – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Pandora – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Pandora – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Pandora – plot summary

Part I. Count Otto Vogelstein has just been appointed as secretary to the German legation in Washington. He is travelling from Southampton to New York on board the steamship Donau when he meets Pandora Day, a spirited young American woman and her family. Because of his lack of experience and his rather conventional social views, he is unable to place her socially. Mrs Dangerfield, an experienced American fellow traveller, warns him against closer acquaintance on the grounds that the family lack the necessary social cachet.

Part II. Two years later he meets Pandora again at an exclusive society party in Washington which includes the American president. She has become even more attractive and socially confident. The hostess describes her to Vogelstein as a woman of a ‘new type’. He wonders what this type can be, and is told that it is an exclusively American phenomenon of a younger woman developing upward social mobility as a result of reading, natural talent, and foreign travel.

Vogelstein joins Pandora on a boating party up the Potomac river to the home of George Washington and feels himself drawn closer to her – even entertaining ideas of her qualities as a diplomat’s wife. However, he is cautious because he thinks she might be a pushy spouse, and might commit social gaffes in his aristocratic German social circles. However, on landing back in Washington, she is met by a man who turns out to be her long term fiancé who has just been appointed as American ambassador to Holland.

Principal characters

Count Otto Vogelstein	a young man in the German diplomatic service
‘Pandora’ Day	a young American woman
Mr P.W. Day	her father from Utica in upstate New York
Mrs Day	her mother
Mrs Dangerfield	Vogelstein’s American confidante on board the Donau
Mr D.F. Bellamy	Pandora’s fiancé from Utica (40)
Mr Lansing	Bellamy’s friend, an immigration officer in New York
Mrs Bonnycastle	social hostess and arbiter in Washington
Mr Alfred Bonnycastle	her husband
Mrs Steuben	a widow

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

The 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.

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What 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.

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at 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 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.

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Benito Cereno – critical commentary

Benito Cereno – study resources

Benito Cereno – plot summary

Principal characters

Theatrical adaptation

Further reading

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Billy Budd – critical commentary

Billy Budd – study resources

Billy Budd – film trailer

Billy Budd – plot summary

Principal characters

Billy Budd – complete opera version

Further reading

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Daisy Miller – critical commentary

Daisy Miller – study resources

Daisy Miller – plot summary

Daisy Miller – principal characters

Daisy Miller – film adaptation

Daisy Miller – further reading

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

writer, traveller, socialite, gardener, interior designer

writer, traveller, socialite, gardener, interior designer

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Ethan Frome – critical commentary

Ethan Frome – study resources

Ethan Frome – plot summary

Principal characters

Film adaptation

Further reading

Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton – web links

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Fordham Castle – critical commentary

Fordham Castle – study resources

Fordham Castle – plot summary

Principal characters

Further reading

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Four Meetings – critical commentary

Four Meetings – study resources

Four Meetings – plot summary

Principal characters

Further reading

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – critical commentary

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – study resources

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – plot summary

Principal characters

Further reading

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Pandora – critical commentary

Pandora – study resources

Pandora – plot summary

Principal characters

Further reading

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

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