Mantex

Tutorials, Study Guides & More

  • HOME
  • REVIEWS
  • TUTORIALS
  • HOW-TO
  • CONTACT
>> Home / Archives for Henry James

A Bundle of Letters

March 8, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

A Bundle of Letters first appeared in The Parisian in December 1879. This was an English language magazine produced for a readership of expatriate English and Americans living in Europe. The tale was immediately pirated in the USA, not just once, but twice. It first appeared in legitimate book form along with The Diary of a Man of Fifty published by Harper in New York, 1880. James wrote the tale in a continuous creative burst of only two days whilst he was staying in Paris.

A Bundle of Letters

A Bundle of Letters


A Bundle of Letters – critical commentary

This tale is fairly rare in James’s oeuvre in being entirely composed of letters. There is very little attempt to create a narrative or to generate any development of character or plot. James’s approach is something like a mixture of Tobias Smollett and Jane Austen. His characters are writing back home to friends and relatives, recounting their experiences of staying in a Parisian boarding house. The one joke which is sustained throughout the letters is that the characters have come there to live amidst a French family so as to improve their fluency in the language – but they are surrounded by non-French speakers all doing the same thing.

The individual correspondents make self-satirising revelations of themselves – the gushingly enthusiastic aesthete (Louis Leverett); the slightly over-confident New Woman (Miranda Hope) – many of which could be said to be aspects of James’ own character, exaggerated for effect. English and American tourists are staying with a family in Paris to learn the language, but where it seems they spend most of their time talking to each other.

The tale is also connected thematically to the later tale The Point of View where the character Louis Leverett turns up again, along with characters from another earlier story, The Pension Beaurepas. In the later tale they are returning to America on a transatlantic steamer, and there is a similar entertainment offered in their various and contrasting reactions to American society.


A Bundle of Letters – study resources

A Bundle of Letters The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

A Bundle of Letters The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

A Bundle of Letters Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A Bundle of Letters Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

A Bundle of Letters A Bundle of Letters – Classic Reprint edition

A Bundle of Letters A Bundle of Letters – Kindle edition

A Bundle of Letters Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition

A Bundle of Letters A Bundle of Letters – eBook formats at Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

A Bundle of Letters


A Bundle of Letters – plot summary

Miranda Hope is a naive but ardent American feminist who believes in democratic values and is amazed to find European women prepared to tolerate old-fashioned male dominance. She is travelling without a chaperone, and moves to the private boarding house in order to practice her French – but it turns out to be inhabited by other Americans, English, and a German professor.

New Yorkers Violet Ray and her mother end up in the same venue for similar reasons. So does a Bostonian aesthete Louis Leverett who is a name-dropping poseur. All of them write back home to their compatriots, criticising the other guests in the boarding house.

Miranda Hope feels miffed that she cannot establish any contact with the haughty New Yorker Violet Ray, but she is very impressed by Louis Leverett. She also gives an unknowingly satirical account of English arrogance in her descriptions of the English guest Evelyn Vane.

A Bundle of LettersEvelyn herself writes letters packed with vacuous cliches which confirm her as a conventional upper class snob. Meanwhile, the proprietor’s cousin Mr Verdier lives there amongst them free of charge in exchange for making conversation with the guests. His letters to a friend are full of pompous and smutty innuendo concerning his flirtations with the ladies in the house.

The German professor indulges in large scale quasi-philosophic generalisations about the French, American, and English national character – all dressed up in laboured abstract language. Whilst the other characters display petty human weaknesses and vanity, the German professor’s remarks display a rather disturbing picture of what he sees as racial superiority.

There is no real story line or development of any real kind. The letters stop when Miranda Hope suddenly decides to move on to another European country.


Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant


Principal characters
Miranda Hope an ardent feminist and democrat from Maine, New England
Madame de Maisonrouge proprietress of the boarding house
Miss Violet Ray a society girl from New York city
Louis Leverett a small Bostonian aesthete
Evelyn Vane an upper-class young English woman
Mr Verdier the landlady’s cousin, a vain sponger
Dr Rudolph Staub a self-important German professor

Henry James's Study

Henry James’s study


Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

Henry James The BostoniansThe Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette and radical feminist. Trying to pull her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, a vigorous young man 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.

The Bostonians Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Bostonians Buy the book at Amazon US

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

© Roy Johnson 2013


Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: A Bundle of Letters, English literature, Henry James, The Short Story

A Day of Days

August 11, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

A Day of Days first appeared in The Galaxy magazine for June 1866. Its initial appearance in book form was as part of the collection Stories Revived published in three volumes by Macmillan in London, 1885.

A Day of Days

New England – Summer


A Day of Days – critical commentary

This early story reveals James’s enormous potential for generating psychological interest out of very little drama. Almost nothing happens in this story except that a young woman has vague romantic thoughts about one man, when another man unexpectedly arrives. They circle round each other emotionally, go for a walk, and she tempts him to stay. He decides that despite the attraction, it would be better to regard the meeting as a self-contained pleasure. He sticks to his original plans, and moves on.

But in the space of this short narrative we are treated to Adela’s movements from listless boredom, through vague expectancy, to her slightly patronising interest in Ludlow’s frank honesty, and then her overt attempts to detain him when she thinks he might be leaving. All this is done with a Jane Austen-like touch of irony and satirical inflation. Adela is described thus:

Even after six years of the best company, too, she had excellent manners. She was, moreover, mistress of a pretty little fortune, and was accounted clever without detriment to her aimiability, and aimiable without detriment to her wit.


A Day of Days – study resources

A Day of Days The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

A Day of Days The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

A Day of Days Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A Day of Days Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

A Day of Days


A Day of Days – plot summary

Young Adela Moore has decided to take a break from society: she goes to live with her elder widowed brother in the countryside. Whilst he is away at a university conference, she lounges at home, secretly hoping that Wheatherby Pysent, a young local parson will visit. Instead, Thomas Ludlow appears, hoping to meet her brother. He is seeking letters of introduction regarding their shared interest in fossils, which he intends to study in Germany.

The couple flirt with each other over the question of his staying or leaving. They decide to go for a walk, but whilst she is changing young Pysent does call at the house. However, Ludlow tells him Adela is not at home. Once in the countryside, they continue their banter. He tells her about himself and his plans to go the very next day to study in Berlin.

When they return to the house she tempts him to stay, and he perceives her as a very attractive option. But on mature reflection he decides that the romance of a single day is sufficient unto itself, and he leaves to take up his journey.


A Day of Days – principal characters
Mr Herbert Moore a childless widower
Adela Moore his rich young sister (23)
Whetherby Pysent a young local parson
Thomas Ludlow a student of fossils from New York

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013


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


Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Short Story

A Landscape Painter

October 9, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, synopsis, commentary, and study resources

A Landscape Painter first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly magazine for February 1866. Its initial appearance in book form was as part of the collection Stories Revived published in three volumes by Macmillan in London, 1885.

A Landscape Painter

New England seascape – Winslow Homer (1836-1910)


A Landscape Painter – critical commentary

The principal theme in this story is that of deceit. The Captain ‘deceives’ Locksley with his sailor’s yarns; Locksley deceives the Blunt family quite explicitly by pretending to be poor; and Esther deceives Locksley by pretending to be in love with him.

The instance of Esther’s deceit is all the more pointed because Locksley has gone into his seaside retreat following the discovery that his fiancée Josephine was marrying him for his money. So in the end he is doubly deceived by the outcome of his venture.

There is an interesting leitmotiv of Locksley’s poor health, though it does not seem to be linked to anything essential in the narrative as a whole. At the outset of the story Mrs M. mentions that ‘He [Locksley] was looking very poorly’. Then whilst living with the Blunts he falls ill. This gives Esther the chance to read his diaries. But following only a few years marriage to her, he dies at the age of only thirty-five.

It is interesting in such an early work by James (1886) that he should make use of a metafictional device – a story that reflects upon itself. It is also the first of his stories to use the device of the ‘framed’ narrative – a principal story which is introduced by a smaller, separate narrative.


A Landscape Painter – principal characters
Mrs M. the outer narrator
Locksley a very rich bachelor, the diarist, a landscape painter (30)
‘Captain’ Richard Blunt an old sailor
Esther Blunt his daughter, a handsome talented woman (27)
Mr Johnson an admirer of Esther’s
John Bannister formerly engaged to Esther

A Landscape Painter – study resources

A Landscape Painter The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

A Landscape Painter The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

A Landscape Painter Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A Landscape Painter Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

A Landscape Painter Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

A Landscape Painter Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

A Landscape Painter


A Landscape Painter – plot summary

Rich bachelor Locksley has broken off his engagement to beautiful Josephine Leary upon discovering her mercenary nature. He dies at the age of thirty-five. His estate comes into the possession of Mrs M, and she presents the events described in the ‘last hundred’ pages of a diary he kept between the ages of twenty-five and thirty.

Following the split with his fiancée Locksley goes into seclusion and is pleased with his isolation at Newport, but feels he ought to explore his surroundings. He hires a boat, finds an island and, caught by the tide, has to be taken back by Captain Blunt, an old sailor. Blunt invites him to be a lodger in his home, subject to the approval of his daughter, who teaches music in a local school.

Esther Blunt turns out to be young, handsome, and intelligent. Locksley later changes his opinion of her and revises her age. Having decided to change his life and conceal his wealth, he feels that a simple rustic life will suit his purposes. He is aware that he is acting out the part of a ‘poor’ person, and he believes that the captain indulges in romantic fibs and sailors’ yarns. He writes in a self-congratulatory manner about his integration with the household.

On a Sunday, instead of going to church, Locksley flirts with Esther, who lectures him on being less egotistical and more sociable. The captain reveals that Esther was formerly engaged to John Banister, who failed to become rich and later left for China.

Esther helps nurse Locksley through a period illness, after which it is revealed that she has refused an offer of marriage from Mr Johnson. The captain, Esther, and Locksley go on a picnic to a local island, all of which Locksley describes in his diary as an impressionist painting.

When the captain is absent one night, Locksley proposes to Esther, and although teasing him the meanwhile, she accepts. He still maintains his pretense of being poor, but plans to reveal the truth after they are married.

But on honeymoon, when he gives her his diaries to read, she reveals that she has already read them whilst he was ill. She knows he is rich, and even points out that she doesn’t love him and has only married him for his money.


A Landscape Painter – further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013


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


Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Short Story

A Light Man

June 28, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

A Light Man first appeared in The Galaxy magazine in July 1869. Its first appearance (heavily revised) in book form was in the collection Stories by American Authors published in New York by Scribner in 1884.

A Light Man


A Light Man – critical commentary

It is interesting that the quotation at the head of this tale is from Robert Browning – who is famous both for his dramatic monologues and his use of dubious ‘narrators’. One thinks for instance of the Duke in My Last Duchess who is explaining away with apparent sang froid the fact that he has had his former wife murdered.

First person narrators may be honest; they may be misguided; and they may be outright liars. Henry James was alert to the possibilities of this literary device from the earliest days of his writing career, and is famous for the use he made of it in his later works, such as the very complex situation he creates in The Turn of the Screw.

A Light Man seems to be a study in both ambiguity and the unreliable narrator. – but one which does not quite resolve itself to any satisfactory conclusion.

At one level, Max is quite honest in revealing that he is both hypocritical and insincere. He is an empty man emotionally and spiritually, and yet he tells us so. He has no ambition, and eventually thinks he ought to marry a rich woman just for something to do. He describes himself as an ‘adventurer’.

But his account of Sloane reveals his most disgusting characteristics. Whilst accepting the comforts of his host’s hospitality, he unleashes a torrent of criticism belittling and criticising him. .

Yet in his final dealings with Theodore in the conflict over Sloane’s will, he expresses a wish to remain friendly with Theodore. This is either completely insincere or yet another level of his duplicity. The narrative offers few clues about how this should be interpreted.

And of course at the end of the story he is waiting for Miss Meredith – the woman who has inherited from her wealthy relative Sloane and who will fit the template for a rich wife Max has created for himself.

The only way the story makes more sense and these inconsistencies and contradictions can be resolved, is to see it as a lightly coded study of Sloane as an aged homosexual paying for the attention of two much younger men who are vying with each other to be his favourite. The extensive revisions made to the text after its first publication support this reading.


A Light Man – study resources

A Light Man The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

A Light Man The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

A Light Man Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A Light Man Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

A Light Man A Light Man – paperback reprint – Amazon UK

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

A Light Man


A Light Man – plot summary

The narrative takes the form of a diary written by Maximus (Max) Austin, who has returned to his native America after living in Europe. He receives a letter from his friend Theodore Lisle inviting him to spend a month with Frederick Sloane at his house in the country. Sloane is old and infirm, but a bon viveur, and he has embarked on writing his memoirs.

Max recounts the story of his friend Theodore, who returned from living in Europe to look after his sisters. He then became ill, and finally got the job of amanuensis to Sloane, which Max sees as a demeaning role.

Sloane invites Max to stay on at the house. Max gives an account of his own nature, which reveals him as complacent, uncreative, and self-congratulatory. He can think of nothing to do with his life, and decides he might as well look for a rich wife.

He provides a hypocritical summary of his host’s life: Sloane married a rich woman who died young; he has spent most of his life (and fortune) living in Europe, and has returned to America to restore his present home. He has had a succession of hangers-on living with him. Max’s account becomes a vituperative character assassination of his host.

When Theodore falls ill, Sloane implores Max to stay with him as a form of surrogate son, and he begins to be critical of Theodore, whose role Max takes over. Theodore receives letters from his sister, which Sloane uses as a pretext to get rid of him. Theodore discusses his insecurity with Max, who thinks of his friend as merely a vulgar fortune hunter.

Max tells Sloane he must leave to find employment in New York, because he has no money – at which Sloane offers to alter his will if Max will stay (the implication being that the will is currently made in Theodore’s favour). When slightly recovered, Sloane asks Max to retrieve his will, with a view to destroying it.

But when Max goes to fetch the will, Theodore has it. They discuss its contents without actually reading it. Theodore burns the will, then the two men challenge each other. Theodore believes that Max has usurped his position and hoped to gain the property: Max unconvincingly claims innocence and says he wishes to remain friends.

Meanwhile, Sloane dies. His estate will go to a distant niece, Miss Meredith, for whom Max is waiting at the end of the story.


Principal characters
Maximus Austin the American narrator (32)
Theodore Lisle his old friend
Frederick Sloane a rich widower (72)

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013


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


Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Short Story

A London Life

March 6, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

A London Life first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine, vols 3—4 (June—September 1888). It is one of the longest of James’s tales – in fact it belongs in the category he particularly admired which we now call the nouvelle or novella. In subject matter it is fairly close to What Masie Knew (1897) and The Awkward Age (1899) in dealing with the issue of problematic marriages and their effect on children, relatives, and friends.

A London Life

The Strand – John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893)


A London Life – critical commentary

This is a curiously uneven piece of work by James’s usual standards, marred by what seem like a fractured spine and an absence of resolution. The first half of the novella, set on the Berrington estate at Mellows, is leisurely and establishes the triangulation of the family conflict quite evenly. Laura is the protagonist and the focaliser of events, whilst her sister and brother-in-law provide the dramatic conundrum, and Lady Davenant is like the Greek chorus, offering Laura humane wisdom as she faces her personal dilemma.

At the end of this period there is a lull in the drama when Lionel and Selina cease feuding and get on better together. Laura even reconciles herself to accepting the state of affairs. This is credible enough in terms of a realistic account of the ebb and flow of human relationships, but it doesn’t seem to serve any dramatic purpose, because there is not going to be any harmonising resolution in the plot.

In the second part of the tale, when the scene moves to London, there is a distinct shift in tone. A new character is introduced – Mr Wendover – who provides the romantic interest for Laura. But he proves to be an odd mixture. He declares his love to Laura, tells Lady Davenant he is leaving London, and then pursues Laura to America.

Laura’s climactic scene at the opera has all the hallmarks of a passage in which her hyperventilating view of events suggests that she might have an unreliable understanding of what is going on around her. There is no evidence in the text that her interpretation of events is sound – yet it proves to be the case that Selina does use the occasion to elope with Captain Crispin.

We are given no further account of events from Selina’s point of view, only her husband’s outrage and desire to pursue the divorce. Therefore the only dramatic point of interest remains with Laura – who decides to follow her sister with some vague idea of bringing her back.

She follows her to Brussels, but we do not learn what happens there, and can only conclude that the pursuit was fruitless, since Laura then goes back to America, pursued herself by Mr Wendover. There is therefore no satisfactory dramatic resolution to the strands of the plot that James establishes in the earlier parts of the story. All we know is that the divorce case has reached the courts.

Marriage, money, and inheritance

The story reveals some interesting details about social conventions amongst the English and American upper-classes in the late nineteenth century. Under the ‘laws’ (conventions) of primogeniture Lionel Berrington has inherited the family estate at Mellows on the death of his father. This inheritance even takes precedence over his own mother, who has been moved out of the family home and settled in a separate dower house on the estate at Plash.

Laura’s family have paid money to the Berrington family in the form of a dowry on the marriage of their eldest daughter Selina to Lionel. This has two important social consequences. First – it means there is no money left for Laura, so she is living on the charity of her sister and brother in law. This leaves her both socially and existentially anxious – because she has no independence and no social status unless she herself marries.

Moreover, if there is a scandal between Lionel and Selina (as proves to be the case) this will attach a negative social reputation to the Berrington family, which will make Laura’s chances of finding a suitable husband even more difficult.

On top of this, in the divorce court case of ‘Berrington Vs Berrington and others’, if Selina is found guilty (as seems likely) she will lose her social status and more importantly the capital invested in her marriage. Thus Laura’s future prospects will be undermined even further.

The novella

Any claims that this is a successful example of the novella form must stand up against the observation that it lacks unity of theme, location, or any consistency of preoccupation. Even the title of the story seems eccentric, since the first half of the narrative is located at a country estate, and none of the drama is essentially related to the capital.

Certainly the second half of the story is located in London – but both Laura Wing and Mr Wendover are Americans, and they are not affected by anything to do with London, so much as the bad behaviour of Selina and her husband, who could be living anywhere.

The ending of the story also leaves many of its elements unresolved. We do not know what happened when Laura reached Brussels, but can only infer that her mission to retrieve Selina was unsuccessful. We do not know what she will do back in America, or what becomes of her. We do not know if Mr Wendover’s on-off pursuit of Laura will be successful or not. These are loose ends – not the tight construction of a successful novella.


A London Life – study resources

A London Life The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

A London Life The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

A London Life Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A London Life Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon US

A London Life A London Life – Classic Reprint edition

A London Life A London Life – World’s Classics edition

A London Life A London Life – the original magazine publication

A London Life A London Life – eBook formats at Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

A London Life


A London Life – plot summary

Part I. A young American woman Laura Wing discusses the issue of her ‘poverty’ and prospects in life with her older English friend Lady Davenant. The money in Laura’s family has gone to her elder sister Selina, with whom Laura is now living in England on a charitable basis. Selina is married to Lionel Berrington, who has inherited the Mellows estate following his father’s death. Lionel’s mother Mrs Berrington has been moved to live in a dower house at Plash, on the estate. Laura senses problems in her sister’s marriage, since the couple spend almost no time together, and she fears that her sister might create a scandal. She also feels insecure about her own lack of social status or any meaningful purpose in life.

Part II. The Berrington children are neglected by both parents, and Laura feels sympathetically drawn to Miss Steet, their governess, even though her sister snobbishly disapproves of social contacts with the family’s employees. Lionel returns unexpectedly from one of his absences to report that Selina has been seen in Paris with a friend Lady Ringrose, of whom he disapproves. He has clearly been drinking, and both Miss Steet and Laura are embarrassed by his vulgar behaviour and the unsavoury details of the family conflict he is revealing.

Part III. Lionel reappears once again later to reveal that Selina is in fact in Paris with her latest lover Captain Crispin, and that he intends to divorce her. He wants Laura’s help, but she is appalled and distressed by the idea of a scandal in the family.

Part IV. When Selina returns from Paris Lionel challenges her with this information. There is savage conflict between them, but to Laura she completely denies being with Captain Crispin, and in retaliation defames her husband’s own character.

Part V. Following this however Lionel and Selina appear to return to a tolerant attitude towards each other, which leaves Laura feeling apprehensive. She thinks of escaping, but learns to live in the morally ambiguous atmosphere which prevails at Mellows.

Part VI. When the Berrington family return from the country to lives in their various London homes for the ‘season’ Laura meets Mr Wendover, a fellow American who appeals to her because his open and forthright manner reminds her of ‘home’. He is naively eager to absorb the best of English society and manners, so Laura takes him to meet her friend Lady Davenant, where they all get on well together.

Part VII. Laura and Wendover explore London together, and she begins to reflect meanwhile more charitably on her sister’s possible innocence – since Selina is spending time with a friend in need in Weybridge. But whilst they are in the Soane Museum they bump into Selina in the company of Captain Crispin – which plunges Laura into renewed consternation.

Part VIII. Laura debates with herself the possible explanations for her sister’s socially reckless behaviour, but when they go out to dinner it is Selina who reproaches Laura for breaking the rules of social etiquette. She points out that it is not acceptable for a single woman to go sightseeing on her own with a bachelor.

Part IX. Laura contemplates revealing to Lionel that she has seen Selina with the man he suspects to be her lover. She sits up late into the night, waiting for her sister to come home. When Selina finally arrives, she bursts into tears and appeals to Laura to remain and help to ‘save’ her, promising never to see Captain Crispin again.

A London LifePart X. Laura subsequently forms a closer bond with her sister, and takes her out to concerts and galleries. She reports all this to her friend Lady Daventry, who still encourages Laura to take an interest in Mr Wendover. When Laura and her sister accept an invitation from Mr Wendover to his box at the opera, Selina goes to join Lady Ringrose in another box and doesn’t return. Laura suddenly feels exposed and betrayed again. She feels sure Selina is secretly meeting Captain Crispin, and even though Mr Wendover declares that he loves her, she doubts his sincerity.

Part XI. Selina disappears, leaving Laura to appeal to Lady Davenant for help. Her friend takes her in and sends for Mr Wendover, who reveals that he has no money and no intention of marrying Laura. He says that he is shortly due to leave London

Part XII. Laura is ill for a few days. Lionel visits her but refuses to reveal her sister’s whereabouts, because he wishes to recruit Laura to his own cause in divorce proceedings. Mr Wendover comes back again – but Laura rejects him and extracts from Lionel the fact that Selina has gone to Brussels.

Part XIII. Laura follows her sister to Brussels, and from there travels on to America, where Mr Wendover follows her, as the divorce case of ‘Berrington Vs Berrington and others’ gets under way in London.


Principal characters
Laura Wing a young American woman living in England
Selina Berrington Laura’s elder sister
Mrs Berrington a widow living in a dower house
Lionel Berrington her son, who has inherited the Mellows estate
Lady Davenant a friend of Mrs Berrington and confidante to Laura
Miss Steet governess to the Berrington children
Scratch/Geordie son of Berringtons
Parson/Ferdy son of Berringtons
Lady Ringrose friend of Selina’s
Captain Charley Crispin Selina’s lover
Lord Deepmere a previous lover of Selina’s
Mr Wendover an American bachelor
Mr Booke his opera-loving friend

Henry James's Study

Henry James’s study


Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013


Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


Filed Under: James - Tales, The Novella Tagged With: A London Life, English literature, Henry James, Novella

A Most Extraordinary Case

July 16, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, web links, and study resources

A Most Extraordinary Case first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly for April 1868. The first book text was in the collection Stories Revived published in London and New York by Macmillan in 1885.

A Most Extraordinary Case

The American Civil War 1861-1865


A Most Extraordinary Case – critical commentary

In 1861 Henry James injured his back helping to pump water during a fire at Newport (RI). His father Henry James Snr had him examined by Dr Bigelow, an eminent physician at Harvard Medical School, who pronounced that there was nothing organically wrong with the young man. Nevertheless, by the time Henry James’s name was selected for military service in the Union Army in 1863, he was excused service because of what he described as ‘that obscure hurt’.

James was very ambiguous regarding his affliction, and yet he used it as a personal metaphor to identify himself with the war and the pain and suffering that he witnessed at first hand amongst the combatants he visited in field hospitals after battles. It is therefore perhaps not fanciful to see the curiously undefined illness from which Colonel Ferdinand Mason is suffering as both a parallel to James’s own condition and a metaphor for public suffering because of the war.

Perhaps the really most extraordinary thing about the story is the amazing episode when Mason comes close to making a full declaration of his feelings to Caroline whilst they are on their countryside excursion. The two characters are circling round each other emotionally when she detaches herself to explore some rocks by the water’s edge. She returns with a torn dress:

“You have torn your dress,” said Mason.
Miss Hoffmann surveyed her drapery. “Where, if you please?”
“There, in front.” And Mason poked out his walking-stick, and inserted it into the injured fold of muslin. There was a sudden unexpected violence in the movement which attracted Miss Hofmann’s attention. She looked at her companion, and, seeing that his face was discomposed supposed that he was annoyed at having been compelled to wait …
Mason had planted his stick where he had let it fall on withdrawing it from contact with his companion’s skirts, and stood leaning against it, with his eyes on the girl’s face.

It is unusual for James to use such very explicit symbolism: he is normally much more subtle. But it should perhaps be borne in mind that he was only twenty-five when he wrote this story, and it is even possible that he was unconscious of the suggestive nature of this episode. Not that this matters: we should ‘Trust the tale, not the teller’.


A Most Extraordinary Case – ptudy resources

A Most Extraordinary Case The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

A Most Extraordinary Case The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

A Most Extraordinary Case Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A Most Extraordinary Case Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

A Most Extraordinary Case


A Most Extraordinary Case – principal characters
Colonel Ferdinand Mason a young American ex-Civil War invalid
Mrs Maria Mason his aunt, a childless widow
Miss Caroline Hofmann her beautiful and talented niece (25)
Dr Horace Knight a former army surgeon
Dr Gregory old-school practitioner
George Stapleton young, handsome, and rich friend of Caroline
Edith Stapleton friend of Caroline

Henry James's Study

Henry James’s study


A Most Extraordinary Case – plot summary

Part I.   In 1865 at the end of the American Civil War, Colonel Ferdinand Mason is recovering in a seedy New York hotel when he is visited by his aunt Mrs Maria Mason. She wishes to help him recuperate in her own home. The next day he arrives there.

Part II.   Mason is looked after by Dr Knight, to who he describes his state of demoralisation. He has spent years in scholarship, then three years of arduous war service. He becomes more domesticated under the influence of his aunt.

Part III.   Caroline Hofmann is a beautiful and well-educated young woman who has toured Europe and turned down a number of offers of marriage. His aunt asks him not to fall in love with her. Mason spends his time going for drives, reading, and admiring Caroline.

Part IV.   Mason and Dr Knight listen to Caroline playing the piano, then discuss his prospects of recovery. The doctor advises him to allow a full year for the process. Mason is thin and weak, and feels pessimistic about his future.

Part V.   Mason assists his aunt and Caroline to get ready for a party, and then suddenly feels faint. Next day the doctor enthuses about Caroline’s energy at the dance and her good looks.

Part VI.   Mason doesn’t think he has the human resources that Caroline would require from a man. He is in love with her, but acts with consummate restraint. She takes him on an excursion into the countryside, where he comes very close to revealing his true feelings about her.

Part VII.   But the next day he is ill again, and remains so for the next three weeks. Caroline moves out to live with some friends the Stapletons, and returns slightly changed, possibly because of the attentions of her friend, George Stapleton.

Part VIII.   But following another visit from doctor Knight Mrs Mason reveals to Ferdinand that Caroline and the doctor are engaged. Mason is pained by the news, but feels he ought to face the blow stoically. Nevertheless, when Caroline goes to stay with her future mother-in-law, Mason misses her terribly. He reads voraciously to distract his attention, and Mrs Mason helps him to plan a future in Europe, where she intends to live.

Part IX.   Mason finally has enough strength to attend a party, where he is a big social success in the company of Caroline and her friend Edith Stapleton. However, this episode is followed by another collapse of his health. He changes his will in favour of his friend doctor Knight, and dies shortly afterwards.


Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant


Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013


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


Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Short Story

A New England Winter

June 1, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, and study resources

A New England Winter first appeared in magazine form in The Century Magazine for August—September 1884. It was then reprinted in book form amongst Tales of Three Cities in England and America in 1884. The setting for this tale is the New England capital of Boston, Massachusetts: the other two cities in the collection were New York and London.

New England Winter

A New England winter scene


A New England Winter – plot summary

Part I.   Susan Daintry, a fastidious Boston widow, is awaiting a visit from her son Florimond, who has been studying art in Paris for six years. She is intensely concerned with the moral issues arising from microscopic niceties of protocols regarding her servant girl.

Part II.   She visits her sister-in-law Lucretia, whose furnishings she inspects in a critical manner. The two women are subtly competitive with each other in terms of social ‘correctness’. Susan wants Lucretia to accept Rachel Torrence (Florimond’s cousin) as a lodger over the winter months in order to tempt him to stay at home – even though she would not wish Florimond to marry her. Lucretia thinks it would be wrong to make use of Rachel in this way.

Part III.   In the days that follow however, both women change their minds, feeling that they have been in the wrong. Lucretia writes to Susan, offering alternative accommodation for Rachel. The letter crosses with a message from Susan apologising for having asked for the favour.

Part IV.   When Florimond arrives at his mother’s house, he becomes increasingly critical of the disruption caused by his sister’s children. There are serious social protocols considered about the order of precedence in which people should visit each other. Florimond walks through a wintry Boston landscape to his aunt’s house.

Part V.   Florimond egotistically tells his aunt all about his life in Paris, in an affected manner. She recommends that he meet Rachel, secretly hoping that the girl’s influence will challenge his pretensions, because Rachel is a spirited girl. Lucretia also secretly hopes that Florimond will fall in love with Rachel and be snubbed by her.

Part VI.   Florimond becomes a habitué of a relative Mrs Pauline Mesh, and falls under the spell of Rachel, who becomes the celebrity of the winter season. He begins to see positives in Boston life and society. However, Mrs Mesh starts to tire of Rachel’s company. Susan Daintry arrives at Mrs Mesh’s house to find her son there, and feels guilty for what might be perceived as ‘spying’ on him. She is still in the dark regarding Florimond’s intentions. Rachel turns up and jousts verbally with Florimond. Later, his mother questions him about Rachel, but he is non-committal in his responses.

Part VII.   Florimond increasingly appreciates the visual life of Boston, and travels to Cambridge. Lucretia worries about the relationship between Florimond and Rachel, but Rachel suddenly declares that she is due to go back to Brooklyn. She explains that she has been keeping Florimond occupied from a sense of duty whilst he is secretly enamoured of Pauline Mesh. Lucretia insists that Rachel come to stay with her.

Susan Daintry arrives at Lucretia’s with the stale news that Rachel is going back to New York – and all her winter’s worries are over. Lucretia reveals to her the latest true state of affairs. Florimond continues to visit Pauline Mesh’s house, and nothing changes – until Susan Daintry decides to go to Europe for the summer, and takes Florimond with her.


Principal characters
Mrs Susan Daintry a Boston widow
Beatrice her servant
Florimon Daintry a young impressionist painter who lives in Paris
Joanna Merriman Susan’s daughter-in-law with six children
Miss Lucretia Daintry Susan’s sister-in-law
Rachel Torrance Florimond’s cousin, a poor would-be painter from New York
Mrs Pauline Mesh a relative of the Daintry family from Baltimore

Study resources

A New England Winter The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

A New England Winter The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

A New England Winter Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A New England Winter Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon US

A New England Winter A New England Winter – paperback edition – Amazon UK

A New England Winter A New England Winter – paperback edition – Amazon US

A New England Winter A New England Winter – read the original publication

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

A New England Winter


A New England Winter – further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

Henry James The BostoniansThe Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette and radical feminist. Trying to pull her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, a vigorous young man from the gallant 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.

A New England Winter Buy the book at Amazon UK
A New England Winter Buy the book at Amazon US

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013


Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Short Story

A Passionate Pilgrim

June 25, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

A Passionate Pilgrim first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly during March—April 1871. Its first presentation in book form was in A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales published by Osgood in Boston 1875.

A Passionate Pilgrim

Oxford University


A Passionate Pilgrim – critical commentary

Travelogue

Quite apart from the subject of this tale, the settings are like a snapshot albumn of Henry James’s love affair with England – a relationship which was to culminate with his taking out British citizenship in 1915, shortly before his death.

The scenes are all very traditional – the English city inn (pub) with its mahogany snugs; Hampton Court Palace and its gardens; an English country estate with stately home and portraits of ancestors; Oxford University with ancient grey buildings and lawned courtyards.

Ghost story

The tale has an on-off relationship with conventional listings of James’s ghost stories – but it certainly qualifies as a variation on his exploration of this genre. Sloane is a person who is in a feverish state, somewhere between life and death. And whilst in this state, confronted with concrete evidence of his connections with the family, he both identifies with the ghost of an ancestor and imagines himself to be one ghost who can haunt another. Shortly after this he ‘encounters’ the vision of his ancestor.

As he approaches death, he believes that he has attended Oxford University in the form of his historical relative, and can ‘remember’ how things were then. Since Oxford clings to its traditions so fiercely, very little will have changed in the intervening hundred years or so.

Parallels

When Sloane takes to his Bath chair, he is pushed around by the old man who turns out to have a very similar life history. He too was once prosperous, but has fallen from grace. He too has a well-to-do relative who is not helping him. Searle’s gift of his last five pounds seals the bond between them.


Study resources

A Passionate Pilgrim The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

A Passionate Pilgrim The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

A Passionate Pilgrim Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A Passionate Pilgrim Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

A Passionate Pilgrim A Passionate Pilgrim – eBook formats at Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

A Passionate Pilgrim


A Passionate Pilgrim – plot summary

Part I.   An un-named narrator is staying in London, en route from Europe to America. He describes the traditional interior of an old city-centre inn. Two fellow Americans dine in an adjacent cubicle. Mr Searle is lean, sickly, and disappointed regarding a claim on some property in England. Mr Simmons has been making enquiries on his behalf, and failed. He offers to take Searle back to the USA at his own expense, but the offer is refused. Searle says he will stay in England until his last remaining money runs out, and he dies.

Next day the narrator goes to Hampton Court where he meets Mr Searle. They have lunch together, and Searle relates his story. He was a young man of fine tastes who fell on hard times. Knowing that there was an old family claim to an English estate, he dispatched Simmons who at first gave him hope, but the previous night has revealed that he has no claim at all. Searle is now bankrupt, and the property is owned by Richard Searle, a distant relative. The narrator offers to help him double-check his claim.

Part II.   They travel to Lackley Park in a picture-book English setting and visit the Hall. The housekeeper shows them round. Searle spots a portrait of an older relative Clement Searle who he closely resembles, and reveals himself as a member of the family. They also meet Miss Searle, his distant cousin. Searle feels himself at home, and even the household dogs take a liking to him. The narrator makes romantic connections between the two cousins.

Part III.  The two visitors are enthusiastically invited to stay, but when they then meet the owner Richard Searle he is not sympathetic to either of them. Richard Searle tells them the history of his ancestor Clement. He had a secret lover, a clergyman’s daughter, who was with child which died when the Searle family rejected her. Clement Searle died at sea, en route to America. The house is haunted by the ghost of the clergyman’s daughter. Feeling a very close family connection, Searle proposes himself as the ghost of Clement Searle to haunt her in return. He becomes tipsy and unguarded.

The narrator promotes Searle to his cousin, but they are challenged by Richard Searle about the claim on his property which solicitors have revealed to him. There is a general argument, and Richard Searle accuses his relative of making false claims and trying to corrupt his sister. The narrator and Searle are thrown out, and on their way back to the inn Searle reveals that his cousin has offered to marry him. Later that night Searle sees the ghost of his relative Margaret. Next morning he believes he has the distinction of being a man who is also a ghost.

Part IV.  The two men travel to Oxford where Searle begins to imagine that he is Clement Searle, who attended the University a hundred years or more previously. He goes into raptures about the buildings, grounds, and traditions as if he knows them all well. He begins to fraternise with the current undergraduate students and starts to drink heavily. Searle grows weaker and takes to a Bath chair. They hire an old man to push him round: he too has fallen socially. He has a well-to-do brother and wishes he could go to America, where he thinks he could make good. Searle advises him that they are both failures in life, and gives him his last five pounds.

Searle appears to be near death. The narrator sends a note to his cousin Miss Searle. He gives Searle’s few remaining effects to the old man to pay for his passage to America. Miss Searle arrives with the news that her brother has been killed in a fall from his horse. Searle thinks she is wearing mourning clothes on his own behalf, and dies.


Principal characters
I the un-named outer-narrator
Clement Searle a lean and sickly American
John Simmons his associate
Richard Searle the owner of Lackley Hall
Miss Searle Searle’s distant cousin
Rawson a down and out old man

A Passionate Pilgrim - Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant


Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

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

A Passionate Pilgrim Buy the book at Amazon UK
A Passionate Pilgrim Buy the book at Amazon US

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013


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


Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Short Story

A Problem

June 28, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

A Problem first appeared in The Galaxy magazine in June 1868. It was not reprinted during his lifetime, and next appeared in the collection Eight Uncollected Stories of Henry James published by Rutgers University Press in 1950.

A Problem


A Problem – critical commentary

This tale is not much more than a sentimental anecdote, told in very general terms with very little attempt to provide concrete historical detail or even a realistic setting. James was only twenty-five years old and in his apprenticeship phase, writing for popular magazines such as The Galaxy. Even he seemed to be aware of the shortcomings in his work at that time:

I write little & only tales, which I think it likely I shall continue to manufacture in a hackish manner, for that which is bread. They cannot of necessity be very good; but they shall not be very bad.

The tales was illustrated in the magazine (as was quite common at that time) by a sentimental engraving by popular illustrator W. J. Hennessy. It depicts the moment Emma and David are reconciled observed by the rather vacuous clergyman, Mr Clark.

The only other point of note is the manner in which James depicts the two native American Indians in the tale. One is a rather squalid young woman, and the other is her even more negatively portrayed mother, who David believes has been drinking. When the mother addresses the daughter she “said something in her barbarous native gutterals”. It is interesting to see how James portrays native Americans, Afro-Americans, and Jews in his work: he certainly does not win any prizes for political correctness.


A Problem – study resources

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

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

A Problem Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A Problem Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

A Problem


A Problem – plot summary

On the last day of her honeymoon, newlywed Emma has her fortune told by an Indian squaw. She predicts that Emma will have a child within a year – and that it will die. Emma does have a child which falls ill – but then revives.

She then tells her husband David about an earlier prediction that she would marry twice. He in his turn tells her of a prediction made earlier in his career that he would marry twice. Both of them begin to worry more and more about the congruence of the two prophecies.

Emma starts to become jealous, whilst David becomes more nervous and anxious. He becomes friendly with a single woman called Julia and confides in her about the prophecies. Julia thinks she will help by going to visit Emma, but Emma resents the intrusion of another woman into her affairs.

She leaves David and goes back with their child to live with her mother. Six months later David receives word that his daughter has died. When he visits the house, he and Emma are reconciled by a visiting clergyman – and are thus ‘married’ twice.


Principal characters
Davi a young American man
Emma a young American woman, his wife
Julia a single friend of David’s
Mr Clark a clergyman

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013


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


Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Short Story

A Round of Visits

June 10, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

A Round of Visits first appeared in the English Review in April-May 1910. It was the last completed short story Henry James ever produced. Like other tales he wrote around that time, it deals with the issue of returning to his native America after a long period of living in Europe. James had left the ‘old’ traditional New York of the 1870s, and he was rather taken aback by the ‘new’ America he found on revisiting twenty-five years later.

New York 1909

New York in 1909


A Round of Visits – critical commentary

New American money

This is a story about new American wealth and the modern mega-city. James paints a picture of a cold and hostile New York – a place of bad weather, an influenza outbreak, and streets filled with a strange mixture of emptiness and vehicles which emit horrible screeching noises.

Montieth has lost money. His capital has been accumulated under the supposedly honorable circumstances of ‘old’ New York society. But he has lingered too long in Europe, and the money has been snatched up by a representative of the new, speculative venture capitalists who make money out of other people’s money – in Bloodgood’s case, by absconding with it.

Mrs Folliott has also lost money – but Montieth suspects she has plenty more (as he has). The implication is that American capitalism has been in a boom period. And Winch too has ‘splendidly improved’. Montieth is impressed with his sumptuous accommodation. But it turns out to be wealth accumulated corruptly – in the same way as Bloodgood has done.

James wasn’t exactly short of money himself (his grandfather had been one of the first US millionaires), but he was surprised by the huge fortunes that had been accumulated by American capitalists in the last two decades of the nineteenth century whilst he had been away in Europe.

His reflections on these recent American developments are not very positive, and it is significant that within a few years (and as an act of solidarity during war time with the country he had made his home) he took out English citizenship in 1915.

Structure

In his study of the tales, Henry James: a study of the short fiction, Richard A. Hocks offers an extended and in-depth analysis of James’s irony in this story, and in particular the manner in which the structure of the narrative supports the reversals of expectation that take place:

The formal integrity, too, of A Round of Visits is another illustration of just how much James by the end had furthered the development of American short fiction as a work of art in the course of his career. The seven divisions of the tale are halved by the transitional fourth section (in which no visit occurs), providing a structural balance between the first and final three segments. The first three, moreover, are unified by a repetitive pattern of expectation and rebuff in the encounters with the hotel doctor, Mrs Folliott, and Mrs Ash. The transitional section, with Montieth again outside in the street, has him deciding to reverse his search for sympathy and follow the supposed ‘will of Providence’. The last three sections, in Winch’s apartment, trace the reversal and twistings of Montieth’s expectations and judgements with results even more drastically unexpected than those accumulated in the first three sections.


A Round of Visits – study resources

A Round of Visits The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

A Round of Visits The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

A Round of Visits Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

A Round of Visits Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

A Round of Visits A Round of Visits – Digireads reprint – Amazon UK

A Round of Visits A Round of Visits – eBook at Project Gutenberg

A Round of Visits A Round of Visits – read the story on line

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

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

A Round of Visits


A Round of Visits – plot summary

Part I. Mark Montieth arrives in New York amidst a snowstorm after an absence of ten years living in Paris. He discovers that his old friend Phil Bloodgood has absconded with all the proceeds of money left in trust to him. Montieth falls ill with flu for a few days, then decides to leave his hotel.

Part II. However, he meets Mrs Folliott, who has also lost money entrusted to Bloodgood. Thinking she might offer a sympathetic ear, Montieth actually becomes bored by her complaints about her own loss, and he is glad to accept an invitation to a lunch party. There he meets a pretty young woman who encourages him to visit an old friend Newton Winch, who is also ill with flu.

Part III. Montieth goes to visit Mrs Ash, an old friend from his days in Paris, hoping she will give him a sympathetic ear. But she oppresses him with a non-stop account of the separation from her husband, who is carrying on with Mrs Folliott.

Part IV. He wanders in a rather bleak and hostile New York evening and reflects charitably upon the egoism of other people – then decides to visit his old friend who is sick.

Part V. Newton Winch turns out to be a sophisticated, successful, and very welcoming. Montieth is struck and very impressed by the enormous improvement in his appearance and behaviour.

Part VI. Winch is entirely sympathetic to Montieth’s financial loss and heaps criticism on Bloodgood, but Montieth expresses a certain sympathy for him, and says he would even like to meet him.

Part VII. Winch takes a passionate interest in his friend’s plight, and implores him to keep ‘talking to him’, and by his nervousness gives Montieth reason to think that something is wrong. It transpires that Winch has been guilty of the same sort of pecuniary fraudulent dealing as Bloodgood, and is waiting any moment to be arrested. There is a theatrical knock at the door. Montieth goes to answer it, and whilst he is there, Winch shoots himself.


Principal characters
Mark Montieth an American bachelor
Phil Bloodgood his handsome third cousin and former classmate and close friend
Mrs Folliott an American society woman
Mrs Florence Ash an American society woman, Montieth’s friend in Paris
Mr Newton Winch a rich American old friend of Montieth’s

Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant


Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2012


Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: A Round of Visits, English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Short Story

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 15
  • Next Page »

Get in touch

info@mantex.co.uk

Content © Mantex 2016
  • About Us
  • Advertising
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • FAQ
  • Links
  • Services
  • Reviews
  • Sitemap
  • T & C’s
  • Testimonials
  • Privacy

Copyright © 2025 · Mantex

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in