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The Talented Mr Ripley

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The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) is the first of a series of crime thrillers by Patricia Highsmith featuring the character Tom Ripley. He is an ambitious young American who has come from an undistinguished background, but who has a taste for the good quality things in life, which are not within his means. The talents mentioned in the title turn out to include forgery, deception, mimicry, lying, and murder – from which he miraculously escapes detection.

The Talented Mr Ripley

There are five novels in the series, which have become known collectively as The Ripliad. They are self-contained and can be enjoyed separately – but a knowledge of their chronological development adds a great deal of depth to their meaning – particularly the ironic contrasts between Ripley’s refined social tastes and his shocking exploits.

The Talented Mr Ripley – commentary

Genre and morality

Patricia Highsmith’s novels are often categorised as mystery thrillers or detective stories. Yet the Ripley series in particular contain very little mystery and virtually no detection. That’s because we know who commits the crimes – Ripley himself. The only element of suspense in the narrative is the question ‘will he be found out?’ – to which the answer is ‘Amazingly – no’.

Highsmith is exploring a rather bleak, pessimistic, sometimes misanthropic view of the world in which virtue is not necessarily rewarded and mischief is not always punished. It also has to be said that this view is shot through with elements of black humour – another sign of the times in which she wrote.

The plot

Before she became a full time novelist, Patricia Highsmith wrote the stories for comic books (1942-1948). These have the virtue of being fast-moving tales with clearly defined characters and lots of dramatic twists. This background undoubtedly had an influence on her work as a novelist.

She is also a product of the age of existentialism. – ideas she had already explored in her dramatic and very successful first novel Strangers on a Train (1950) – the text of which is even more complex and psychologically searching than the famous film adaptation made by Alfred Hitchcock.

It is her fascination with aberrant and psychologically disturbed characters that give her stories such impact. In this there is clearly the influence of Dostoyevski – a founding father to the existentialists.

Tom Ripley is a vivid character not just because he commits murders and evades detection, but because he is ruthlessly honest about himself, and scathingly critical of everybody else as well. He knows that Dickie Greenleaf is a mediocre person, a talentless painter, and a spoiled playboy. Yet he is attracted to Greenleaf; indeed he wants to become him. He wears his clothes and jewellery, imitates his voice and his writing, and is happiest when living as him.

The homo-erotic element in this relationship is unmistakable – especially in Tom’s glorification of Dickie’s physical beauty and his disparagement of Marge, who he likens to the leader of a Girl Guide group. What is even more complex and interesting in thiis psychological farrago is that this study of male desire was created by not only a female author, but one who was avowedly homosexual in her own tastes and practices.

Tom’s character

Tom originally thought he might become an actor. His deprived background left him feeling he had no central identity to define a real self, so he thought that imitating someone else might provide him with an acceptable substitute. The events of The Talented Mr Ripley present a study of Tom’s identifying with someone else, to the extent that he wishes to become that person – Dickie Greenleaf.

He does not set out with malicious intentions. Fortune puts the opportunity in his way via Dickie’s father’s request that he try to persuade Dickie to come back from Europe. There is a clear echo of Henry James’ The Ambassadors here, which Patricia Highsmith signals quite clearly in the narrative.

In one sense Tom Ripley does become Dickie Greenleaf. He forges Dickie’s will and inherits his wealth, then he retires to live in a grand French house, with a playboy existence – pottering amongst his plants and painting when the mood takes him. So he replicates the lifestyle of Dickie’s which he so coveted. He also has a glamorous wife (with a rich father) to whom he is rather unconvincingly devoted.

The Talented Mr Ripley – film adaptations

There have been two major film adaptations of the novel. The first was made in 1960 by French director Rene Clement and is called Pleine Soleil, also known as Purple Noon. It stars Alain Delon as Ripley in what was his first major film.

The second was made by British director Anthony Minghella in 1999, starring Mat Damon as Ripley and Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf. This version is beautifully photographed (by John Seale) and received several nominations and film awards

Minghella’s version takes some minor liberties with the story line and introduces new characters and plot complications. Minghella rather unnecessarily creates a second lead female (Meredith Logue, played by Cate Blanchett) and adds a third murder when Ripley kills Peter Smith-Kingsley (Jack Davenport) during the boat trip to Greece. But on the whole his film is amazingly faithful to the original text in terms of rhythm, tone, locations, and atmosphere.

The Talented Mr Ripley – study resources

The Talented Mr Ripley The Talented Mr Ripley – Penguin – Amazon UK

The Talented Mr Ripley The Talented Mr Ripley – Penguin – Amazon US

The Talented Mr Ripley The Talented Mr Ripley – Kindle – Amazon UK

The Talented Mr Ripley The Talented Mr Ripley – Kindle – Amazon US

The Talented Mr Ripley The Talented Mr Ripley – DVD film – Amazon UK

The Talented Mr Ripley The Talented Mr Ripley – DVD film – Amazon US

The Talented Mr Ripley Pleine Soleil – DVD film – Amazon UK

The Talented Mr Ripley Pleine Soleil – DVD film – Amazon US

The Talented Mr Ripley

The complete Ripliad

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)

Ripley Under Ground (1970)

Ripley’s Game (1974)

The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)

Ripley Under Water (1991)

The Talented Mr Ripley

Patricia Highsmith

The Talented Mr Ripley – plot summary

Tom Ripley is a young man living on the edge of legality in New York City. He is collecting cheques from people by issuing false income tax demands. He meets shipbuilder Herbert Greenleaf who asks for help in recovering his son Richard, who has gone to live in Italy. Tom has dinner at the Greenleaf house, where he lies about his academic record.

Crossing to Europe on board ship Tom reflects on his unhappy childhood and blames his Aunt Dottie for not making his life easier. In the (ficticious) town of Mongibello in Italy Tom locates Dickie and Marge Sherwood on the beach. They invite him back for lunch, after which he is sick.

When they meet again Tom explains his mission on behalf of Mr Greenleaf. Dickie invites Tom to live temporarily in his house. Tom finds Dickie commonplace but attractive. They go for lunch in Naples, then on to Rome for the night.

There is talk of travelling together, but Marge disapproves of their irresponsible behaviour. Dickie claims Marge is just a friend, but Tom spies and sees him kissing her. This puts Tom into a jealous rage. He dresses in Dickie’s clothes and imagines strangling Marge. Dickie suddenly appears in the room and there is an embarrassing scene.

Tom and Dickie argue about a proposed trip to Paris. Tom feels he is being squeezed out, and will be left alone at Christmas. They go to Cannes and San Remo, where Tom begins to hate Dickie because of his cold remoteness. When they go out on a boat Tom kills Dickie, steals his wallet, and scuttles the boat.

Tom returns to Mongibello and tells Marge that Dickie is stayIng in Rome for the winter. He steals Dickie’s clothes and makes arrangements to sell Dickie’s house and boat. He goes to Rome, where he writes a goodbye letter to Marge in Dickie’s name.

He goes to Paris at Christmas and enjoys living in someone else’s persona – shedding his own.. He spends the rest of winter in Rome, avoiding giving anyone his address. . However, a fleeting mistake brings Dickie’s friend Freddy Miles to the apartment. Knowing his deception will be exposed, Tom murders Freddy.

He dumps Freddy’s body on the Appian Way then prepares to leave for Majorca. But the body is found and the police arrive to question him. The scuttled boat is also found. Tom feels threatened by people trying to contact him.

The police return to say they think Tom Ripley is dead because of blood in the boat. Then Marge arrives, but he lies to her, gives her the slip, and goes instead to Palermo, Sicily.

In Palermo a letter arrives from Marge for Dickie. She is giving up on the relationship and going back to America. Tom receives notice from the bank that they suspect the signatures on Dickie’s cheques might be forgeries.

When he receives a letter from the police demanding his presence in Rome, he decides reluctantly to revert to being Tom Ripley. The police are also searching for Ripley, but when he presents himself to them he is easily able to convince them of his innocence.

He establishes himself in grand style in Venice, and is visited by Marge. She questions him closely about his time apparently spent with Dickie. Speculation continues about Dickie’s whereabouts. Herbert Greenleaf arrives to check on the latest news. Tom gives him an edited version.

Suddenly, Marge finds Dickie’s rings. Tom lies his way out of the tight corner, and fantasises about killing her. Private detective McCarron arrives to question Tom and Marge closely. Some days later Tom posts Mr Greenleaf a copy of Dickie’s will that he has forged.

Tom is preparing to go to Greece when Dickie’s luggage is found in the American Express office in Venice. Tom sails to Greece, all the time thinking he is about to be arrested. But on arrival in Athens a letter from Mr Greenleaf confirms that he accepts the terms of the will: Dickie’s entire inheritance is left to Tom.

The Talented Mr Ripley – characters
Herbert Greenleaf a rich and successful shipbuilder
Masie Greenleaf his wife, who is dying from lukemia
Richard (‘Dickie’) Greenleaf his son, a self-indulgent playboy and amateur painter
Marge Sherwood Dickie’s American girlfriend, a would-be writer
Tom Ripley a confidence man
Freddie Miles an American playboy friend of Dickie

© Roy Johnson 2017

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The Third Person

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The Third Person first appeared in a volume of stories published under the collective title The Soft Side in 1900. It is one of his many variations on the theme of the ghost story – this one being amusingly satirical.

The Third Person

The Third Person – critical commentary

Ghost stories

Henry James included a number of ghost stories amongst his production of shorter fictions. They were quite popular towards the end of the nineteenth century, and he was quite happy to respond to the commercial demand.

[It should be kept in mind that James employed many techniques to enhance his professional productivity. He hired a stenographist to take his compositions from dictation, and he hired an agent to handle his work in the world of proliferating magazines, journals, and publishing houses – both in England and America.]

The ghost stories range from the deadly and serious The Turn of the Screw in which one character (a child) is literally scared to death, via the similar Owen Wingrave, to playful narratives in which the characters see or believe in ghosts but we the reader are not called on to do so. Sir Edmund Orme even has a benevolent ghost whose task is to protect others from what he suffered.

The Third Person falls into this second category of amusing ghost stories. Two romantically imaginative elderly ladies inherit an old house, and as part of their appreciation of its history they conjure into being their scandalous ancestor. They do so in a spirit of competitive romanticism, and as usual in narratives of this kind there is no corroborative evidence to support the ‘sightings’ of the ghost. We are left in no doubt that they are figments of the ladies’ respective imaginations.

Tauchnitz editions

Tauchnitz was a firm of German publishers in Leipzig who originally produced dictionaries, Bibles, and editions of Greek and Roman classics. When they first introduced cheap paperback English language editions in the mid nineteenth century there were no general copyright agreements, so the books were printed with a warning on their front cover “Not to be introduced into England or into any British colony”.

This prohibition was widely ignored by travellers. Mainland Europe was seen as fertile ground for sexual laxity by the British during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, so anything ‘imported’ from there carried with it the suggestion of immorality. It is therefore deeply ironic that it is the vicar who puts the idea of the smuggled Tauchnitz novel into Amy’s head.

The Third Person – study resources

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

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

The Third Person Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Third Person Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

The third person The Third Person – Digireads reprint edition – Amazon UK

the third person The Third Person – eBook formats at Gutenberg Consortia

the third person The Third Person – read the story on line

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

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

The Third Person

The Third Person – plot summary

Part I. Two elderly and ‘artistic’ spinsters Susan and Amy Frush unexpectedly inherit an old house near the south-east coast of England. They decide to live there together, and hope to uncover some romantic or even scandalous secret from its past. When they discover a bundle of old letters in the cellar, they enlist the help of the local vicar in revealing its contents.

Part II. The same night Susan Frush sees a man in her bedroom with his head twisted on one side. .Conferring with her younger cousin Amy, they rapidly assume and celebrate the fact that the house is haunted by their own personal ghost. Shortly afterwards the vicar, having studied the old papers, reveals that their ancestor Cuthbert Frush was hanged.

Part III. After a further appearance of the ghost (this time to Amy) they manage to persuade themselves that he is both a handsome and attractive man. When the vicar then reveals that their ancestor was hanged for smuggling, they consider this a rather low-class and vulgar crime, but quickly put a romantic gloss on the facts of the case.

Part IV. As time goes on, the two cousins begin to feel a certain rivalry and possessiveness towards the ghost, who they now think of as their own ‘man in the house’. Susan invents meetings and sightings in order to assume the upper hand, and the two women quarrel over their respective levels of intimacy with the ghost.

Part V. Later they decide in a roundabout way to put an end to the ‘understanding’ they have regarding the ghost, but they are not sure what to do about it. Susan finally reveals that she has sent twenty pounds to the government tax office as an expiatory payment to compensate for her ancestor’s historic offence. Amy then travels to France for ten days and on return smuggles into the country a (by implication) scandalous paperback novel. In doing this they feel that they have finally exorcised the ghost by burying the fiction they have created and maintained.

Principal characters
Miss Susan Frush frumpy old spinster maid, painter
Miss Amy Frush her spinster cousin, ten years younger, writer
Mr Patten vicar at Marr
Marr country town in south-east England

Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Ghost stories by Henry James

Red button The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868)

Red button The Ghostly Rental (1876)

Red button Sir Edmund Orme (1891)

Red button The Private Life (1892)

Red button Owen Wingrave (1892)

Red button The Friends of the Friends (1896)

Red button The Turn of the Screw (1898)

Red button The Real Right Thing (1899)

Red button The Third Person (1900)

Red button The Jolly Corner (1908)

Henry James's study

Henry James’s study

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

Red button 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 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 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.
The Third Person Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Third Person Buy the book at Amazon US

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

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

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2012

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The Time Machine

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The Time Machine (1888-1895) is the first of H.G. Wells’ works which made him instantly famous as a writer of science fiction novels at the end of the nineteenth century. He had studied biology and zoology at the National School of Science in South Kensington (later to become Imperial College London) under the tutelage of Charles Darwin’s friend and supporter, Thomas Huxley. Wells’ first novels featured a number of issues in theoretical science on which he also speculated in his journalism – time travel, genetic engineering, inter-planetary warfare, ecology, eugenics, and space travel – all of which he crafted into short, very readable fictions that appealed to a very wide public.

The Time Machine

The Time Machine – a note on the text

The Time Machine first saw light of day as a short story called ‘The Chronic Argonauts’ Wells published it as a student in three editions of the Science Schools Journal (April-June 1888). It then appeared, after several re-writes, in 1894 as The Time Machine in National Observer. but the serial version was halted whilst still incomplete because the editor of the magazine changed.

However, his original supporter W.E. Henley became the editor of the New Review and encouraged Wells to revise and expand the work. It then appeared as a monthly serial between January and May 1895, attracting considerable attention even before it appeared in single-volume book form published by William Heinemann in May 1895.

For full details of the history and development of the text, plus revisions to subsequent editions, see the note by Patrick Parrinder in the Penguin Classics edition of the novel.

The Time Machine – critical commentary

The conceits which underpin the credibility of the novel are developed in two parts. The first concerns the concept of what constitutes a ‘dimension’. The scientist (and time traveller) argues at the beginning of the story that if we can move in any one of three dimensions (length, breadth, thickness), and if time is considered the forth dimension, then why should we not be able to move in time as well? The idea is very seductive. Wells simply equates these ‘four’ dimensions as equal – and the rest follows naturally:

“There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it”, and “any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and Duration”.

This rather simplistic notion of time being a ‘dimension’ of the same order as length, breadth, and thickness is taken at face value by Wells, his outer-narrator, and the scientist himself. That having been argued (and ‘established’) Wells makes no effort at all to create a convincing method of explaining how these transitions in time will be made. Instead, the scientist constructs his time travel machine – a Heath-Robinson type of contraption, with ‘ivory bars’, ‘a brass rail’, ‘a saddle’, and a ‘starting lever’ which propels him eight hundred thousand years into the future. In a later essay (1933) commenting on his own work, Wells admitted that this was a form of literary-scientific sleight-of-hand:

For the writer of fantastic stories to help the reader play the game properly, he must help him in every possible unobtrusive way to domesticate the impossible hypothesis He must trick him into an unwary concession to get some plausible assumption and get on with the story whilst the illusion holds. … Hitherto, … the fantastic element was brought in by magic … It occurred to me that … an ingenious use of scientific patter might with advantage be substituted.

The second part of his conceit is the social conditions of the world his scientist visits. This world of the future (located in the Thames valley) of 802, 701 AD is comprised of a rag bag of elements that reflect interests Wells himself espoused – vegetarianism, socialist utopias, class conflict, and genetic mutation.

The creatures who live above ground – the Eloi – are etiolated and enfeebled because they have reached a stage of development in which all conflict and struggle has been removed from their lives. They exist in a state of idiotic collective bliss, surviving on a diet of fruit in communal halls. Even the differentiation between the sexes has almost disappeared. However, they are ‘supported’ by the Morlocks, who live underground and take their revenge for this injustice by eating the Eloi when they get the chance.

It is not entirely clear why the Morlocks, having mastered machinery, have not also retained the skills of husbandry, and why they are still afraid of light – including struck matches. Wells’ vision of a future world is not an altogether coherent set of circumstances, just a set of alarmist warnings.

Form

It has to be said that for such an early work, the novel is very neatly constructed – in three parts. The first two chapters of the novel outline the scientist’s ‘theory’ of travelling in the fourth dimension and his presentation of the model version of his time machine to his dinner guests. The second and main part of the work is his account of the temporal journey and his adventures in the future – which he gives as a first person narrative. Then the third part returns to the scene of the somewhat incredulous dinner guests where the outer narrator takes over to report that the scientist has embarked on another journey and has not been seen for three years.

This conclusion suggests that either something has gone wrong and the scientist is ‘stuck’ in some future (or past) date, or that he has somehow become a permanent time-traveller with no reason to return to his earthly ‘present’. Both of these possibilities reinforce the illusion that the time machine actually ‘works’.

In her introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the book, Marina Warner describes The Time Machine as ‘a long short story’ , and there are good arguments to support this view. The work is only 25,000 words long, and it is composed essentially of one anecdote.

But on the other hand the book is built on a large and powerful idea with universal implications – even if the theory is flawed. And the scientist’s exploits amongst the Morlocks and Eloi are more complex and substantial than constitute the material of a short story. So it could be argued that the work is a short novel or even a novella.

Footnote

Regarding Wells’ quasi-scientific notions of ‘dimensions’ , there is an interesting but little-known novella which explores imaginary worlds of one, two, and three dimensions published only ten years earlier. It was written by Cambridge scholar and clergyman Edwin A. Abbott in 1884. . Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions explores (in a witty and fantastical manner) the idea that people living in a world of only x-dimensions cannot conceptualise anyone living in a world of x+1 dimensions. His examples range from people living in lines, squares, cubes, and spheres, and In one sense his satirical thesis supports Wells’ notion that time is merely another ‘dimension’. Abbott’s conclusion is that we, who live in a world of three dimensions, merely have difficulty conceptualising life in a world of four dimensions – or even more.

The Time Machine – study resources

The Time Machine The Time Machine – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Time Machine The Time Machine – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Time Machine H.G. Wells Classic Collection – five novels – Amazon UK

The Time Machine H.G. Wells Biography – Amazon UK

The Time Machine

The Time Machine – first edition – 1895

The Time Machine – chapter summaries

1   A scientist (the Time Traveller) is explaining the geometry of four dimensions – length, breadth, thickness, and time. He produces a model of a time machine and sets it off into the future or maybe the past. He has a full scale model in his laboratory

2   A week later a group of observers assemble for dinner at the scientist’s house in Richmond. He appears in a ragged and dishevelled state. After dressing for dinner he then tells them that he has been time travelling for eight days.

3   He tells how got into the machine, pulled its levers, and shot forward in time at a vertiginous pace, traversing years in minutes. When he stops he encounters a huge Sphinx figure on a bronze pedestal, then is approached by small long-haired people.

4   It is the year 802, 701 AD. The elfin-like folk take the scientist into a large dilapidated hall where they eat fruit around low stone tables. Many common animals have become extinct. He tries to learn their language, but they have very little patience or concentration. There is little differentiation between the sexes. He perceives this society as a form of cvommunism, a social paradise in which there is no disease, no traffic, and no conflict. He also sees it as a society which is ‘resting’ in its historical development, having eliminated the need to struggle.

5   After exploring the area overlooking the Thames he finds that his time machine has disappeared. He searches desperately, concluding that it has been hidden inside the bronze pedestal. There are no shops, no machinery, and no old or infirm people in evidence. He rescues a woman-child Weena, who becomes attached to him. He sees ghosts, waterless wells, and a strange white animal resembling an ape. He reasons that another species lives underground – the Morlocks – who are like slaves to the Eloi, who live above ground.

6   After fearful hesitation he climbs down a well and discovers a system of underground tunnels and a hall of machinery. The Morlocks attack him, so he escapes back to the surface again.

7   In fear of the Morlocks he takes Weena to the Palace of Green Porcelain (in Wimbledon) and spends a night under then stars He plans to take her back with him in the time machine

8   When they reach the Palace it turns out to be a derelict museum which he plunders, retrieving a crowbar, some camphor, and a box of matches [which are 800,000 years old].

9   In returning he sets up camp in a wood and lights a fire. But he falls asleep and is set upon by the Morlocks. His camp fire sets the woods alight, and this drives away the Morlocks, who are afraid of light.

10   He returns to the pedestal, to find its doors open and the time machine inside. But as he enters, the doors close and the Morlocks attack him again. He fights them off with matches and the crowbar, and then escapes in the time machine.

11   However, he presses the accelerator and flies even further into the future, bringing the machine to a halt on a desolate stony beach where he is attacked by giant crabs. He goes even further into the future to discover that all animal life has disappeared, and he witnesses an eclipse.

`12   He gradually returns to the laboratory and his dinner guests. They are incredulous, but he has some flowers of an unknown species in his pocket that were put there by Weena. Next day the narrator goes to see him again, but the scientist takes off in the time machine again. Three years later he has still not returned.

Epilogue   The outer narrator reflects that the scientist might have gone back into prehistoric times, or he might be in the near future, when all society’s current problems have been solved.

More science fiction by H.G. Wells

The Time Machine The Invisible Man (1897) – Penguin Classics- Amazon UK

The Time Machine The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Time Machine The Wheels of Chance (1896) – Penguin Classics- Amazon UK

The Time Machine The War of the Worlds (1898) – Penguin Classics- Amazon UK

The Time Machine The First Men in the Moon (1901) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Time Machine The Shape of Things to Come (1933) – Penguin Classics- Amazon UK

© Roy Johnson 2016

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The Tone of Time

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Tone of Time first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine in November 1900 – a remarkably productive year for James in terms of shorter fiction. It was a period which saw the publication of The Great Good Place, Maud-Evelyn, Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie, The Special Type, The Abasement of the Northmores, The Third Person, The Tree of Knowledge, and the story which is widely regarded as his finest – The Beast in the Jungle. He wrote all of these (and more) in addition to working on his next novel, The Sacred Fount (1901).

The Tone of Time

Leon Riesener – Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863)

The Tone of Time – critical commentary

The story turns on the coincidence that two women who were once rivals for the same man recognise each other via the effect his portrait has upon them. One of them paints the portrait on a verbal commission from the other, mediated via the narrator, who knows them both. The narrator acts as a catalyst, and even inherits the painting, without ever knowing the identity of the man in question.

The Tone of Time – study resources

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

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

The Tone of Time Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Tone of Time Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Tone of Time The Tone of Time – Digireads reprint edition – Amazon UK

The Tone of Time The Tone of Time – eBook formats at Gutenberg Consortia

Red button The Tone of Time – read the story on line

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

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

The Tone of Time

The Tone of Time – plot summary

Part I. Mrs Bridgenorth is a middle-aged lady who wishes to commission a portrait of an ideally handsome man to hang in her house. The narrator, a successful painter, recommends the task to a colleague Mary Tredick, who is very good at producing copies. She doesn’t wish to meet the patron, but produces a striking portrait of a man she has once known and loved unhappily.

Part II. When Mrs Bridgenorth is shown the portrait she recognises the subject and reveals that it is someone to whom she was engaged before he died, but who she refuses to name. She is so stricken with the portrait that she offers to double the fee. The narrator reports this to Mary Tredick, who suspects that Mrs Bridgenorth knows something, and she retrieves her painting. When confronted by the narrator Mary reveals that she was once in a relationship with the man, but he ‘failed’ her in favour of Mrs Bridgenorth, who tried to make him marry her. Mary has intuited all this from Mrs Bridgenorth’s intense reaction to the painting. The narrator offers to buy the picture from her, but she refuses, leaving it to him in her will instead. Eventually after her death he has possession of the painting but still doesn’t know the identity of its subject.

Principal characters
— an un-named male narrator
Mary Juliana Tredick a painter
Mrs Bridgenorth commissioner of the painting

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 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 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 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 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.
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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
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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.
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Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2012

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

The Total Library

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criticism, journalism, film reviews, and essays

Jorge Luis Borges is one of the few writers to establish an international reputation on the strength of only having written short stories: (Katherine Mansfield is another). In fact because he never wrote any long works, it is often assumed that he didn’t write very much. The truth is the exact opposite: he never stopped writing, and The Total Library, this huge collection of his non-fiction works is only a sample of his vast output.

The Total LibraryFrom his earliest years he produced book reviews, essays, lectures, film reviews, prologues, and translations in addition to his now-famous fictions. He even invented literary genres – the essay which is part philosophic reflection and part fiction; studies of imaginary works; and biographies of people who did not exist. This in addition to spoofs, mind games, and metaphysical writings of a kind that seem to transcend national boundaries – which is partly why he managed to establish his international reputation.

Borges’ attitude to the lecture illustrates both his personality and his versatility. In his earlier years he gave ‘lectures’ by sitting on the stage and letting somebody else read out a prepared text to the audience. After he went blind he didn’t write out a text at all, but sat in front of the audience and improvised monologues on his chosen topic. He is an immensely sophisticated playboy of the literary world

This volume is a very wide collection in chronological terms – from his earliest pieces written in the 1920s to fragments written shortly before his death in 1986. It even includes early work he later disowned, but which here has wisely been included. This allows us to follow (in excellent translation) the development of his approach to writing.

It has to be said that his early work is marked by an inflated and pretentious literary style – for instance his habit of trying to impress with paradoxical statements “all the film’s characters are recklessly normal”. He also seems to have adopted a great deal of whimsy from the English authors who were the favourite reading of his earlier years. But this affectation drops away from the early 1930s onwards.

At their most lightweight, some of these pieces are no more than paragraph long observations, but at their best they offer amazingly perceptive analyses based on his encyclopaedic knowledge and love of literature. For instance in the middle of discussing Melville’s Bartelby the Scrivener he persuasively argues that the text prefigures the work of Kafka in its rigorous logic and black humour. This is a perception he elaborated into a full length essay seven years later – ‘Kafka and his Precursors’ (1951) in which he wittily argues that great writers create not only their own works, but also their readers and even their precursors. He illustrates what we now call Kafkaesque elements in the work of Kierkegaard and Robert Browning, then observes:

Kafka’s idiosyncracy is present in each of these writings, to a greater or lesser degree, but if Kafka had not written, we would not perceive it; that is to say, it would not exist. The poem ‘Fears and Scruples’ by Robert Browning prophesies the work of Kafka, but our reading of Kafka noticeably refines and diverts our reading of the poem. Browning did not read it as we read it now. .. The fact is that each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

There are surprises on nearly every page. Borges repeatedly asserts that whilst James Joyce is a great twentieth century writer, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are ‘unreadable’. In his film criticism, he pours scorn on King Kong and Now, Voyager (‘Across the screens of the most remote movie houses, the film spreads its bold thesis: A disfigured Miss Davis is less beautiful‘). He defends Rudyard Kipling against his political detractors. And his celebration of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass will make you want to dash out and buy a copy, if you don’t already have one.

There would be a good argument for reading this collection backwards – starting with pieces such as the magnificent essay on ‘The Detective Story’ (1951) or on ‘Blindness'(1977) which is a poetic meditation on the advantages he has gained from losing his own sight – which turn out to be his learning Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian languages. Work your way in reverse chronological order through his essays on anti-Semitism and the second world war, via the sketches he produced for Hogar (the Argentinean equivalent of Ladies’ Home Journal) until you reach the material he (understandably) disowned. For those who have read his celebrated short stories in Ficciones, Labyrinths, and The Book of Imaginary Beings, this collection is a welcome addition to understanding a fascinating writer.

The Total Library Buy the book at Amazon UK

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© Roy Johnson 2011

Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library, London: Penguin Books, 2001, pp.560, ISBN: 0141183020

More on Jorge Luis Borges
Twentieth century literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Touchstone

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

The Touchstone was published in 1900, and was Edith Wharton’s first novella. It’s an amazingly accomplished piece, considering that she did not think she had matured as a writer until more than a decade later, when she published Ethan Frome (1911), which she described as marking the end of her ‘apprenticeship’ as a writer.

The Touchstone

Margaret Aubyn’s letters

The Touchstone – critical commentary

Context

Edith Wharton was a great friend of Henry James, who had written a number of stories dealing with the relationship of authors to society in general, and the problems of biographical revelations in particular. James’s stories generally put the case for the right of authors to retain an autonomous degree of control over the details of their private lives, and he often depicts those who would reveal intimate aspects of a writer’s biography as sneaks, gossip-mongers, and prying busybodies. The most celebrated case of this kind is his novella The Aspern Papers (1888).

Edith Wharton follows this line of argument in The Touchstone. There is never any doubt in Glennard’s mind that by releasing Margaret Aubyn’s letters to the public, he is betraying both her and the one-sided relationship they had in the past. Moreover, he makes the decision to publish for rather dubious motives – because he needs the money in order to marry Alexa Trent, from whom he conceals the fact that the letters were written to him.

However, this view of publishing biographical materials is countered by Flamel’s view that to do so in the case of Margaret Aubyn would be a public service – because she is an important and renowned figure, and because no personal harm can be done to her since she is now dead. At first this appears to be a slippery, diabolical argument leading Glennard into a Faustian pact with his publisher, from which he profits again and again. Hence the dramatic significance of the royalty cheque he receives and his attempt to salve his conscience by paying Flamel a commission fee.

The reader is given ever reason to think that Flamel has underhand motives and is paving his way to seduce Alexa – but in fact he refuses the fee, and turns out to have acted honourably all along, even to the extent of going to live abroad, with the implication that he has been in love with Alexa but is sacrificing his own interests out of respect for hers.

The novella

The basic requirements of the novella form are that it should be short, concentrated, centred on a single theme, with few characters, and tightly focused in terms of time scale, characters, and location. The Touchstone fulfils all these requirements. It has three principal characters, the drama is centred upon Glennard’s moral struggle in his dealings with the other two – and his past relationship with Margaret Aubyn, who is a very good example of a character exerting influence from beyond the grave. And the letters themselves form an appropriate symbol of the central issue of the story – the revelation of biographical information about a well-known writer.

There is more than a hint that Margaret Aubyn is a thinly veiled portrait of Edith Wharton herself. And it’s also interesting to note that she publishes a volume with the title Pomegranate Seed – which Edith Wharton was to do herself when she wrote a story with that title thirty years later.

The Touchstone – study resources

The Touchstone Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

The Touchstone Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon US

The Touchstone - eBook edition The Touchstone – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

The Touchstone - eBook edition The Touchstone – AudioBook format at Gutenberg

Edith Wharton - biography The Touchstone – paperback edition – Amazon UK

Red button A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Touchstone

The Touchstone – plot synopsis

Part I.   New York lawyer Stephen Glennard sees a request for information relating to famous novelist Margaret Aubyn. He is in possession of hundreds of her letters written at a time when she was in love with him but when he was unable to reciprocate her feelings. He feels financially pinched and does not have enough money to marry Alexa Trent.

Part II.   He has been in love with Alexa for two years, and Margaret Aubyn has been dead for three. Glennard met Margaret Aubyn when he was at university, and after her husband died Glennard moved to work in New York, which is when her correspondence began. She decided to move to London, from where she continued her eloquent and vivid sequence of letters. Glennard realises that he is in possession of a rich seam of materials.

Part III.   Alexa reports that her aunt has invited her to live abroad in Europe for two years. This is to relieve the financial burden on her family which Alexa creates as the eldest unmarried daughter. Glennard tries to persuade her to marry him instead, and live frugally.

Part IV.   Glennard feels vaguely guilty that he has been standing in the way of Alexa finding a husband who can support her. His friend Flamel confirms that a collection of Margaret Aubyn’s letters would be very valuable to a publisher. Glennard plans to invest any money he might raise from such a sale.

Part V.   One year later Glennard is married to Alexa, they are living in the suburbs, and his investments are doing very well. Flamel has helped him to edit the letters, and their publication is a big success. Yet Glennard feels oppressed by a sense of regret that he has somehow betrayed Margaret Aubyn. He is worried that Alexa might discover his secret that the letters were written to him, and he is anxious about his pact with Flamel.

Part VI.   Margaret Aubyn’s letters are discussed by a group of people on Flamel’s yacht, following which Alexa asks Glennard to buy her a copy of the Letters. Alexa appears to have closer and closer ties with Flamel.

Part VII.   Alexa knows that Glennard was acquainted with Margaret Aubyn in his earlier university days. Glennard invites Flamel to dinner, where this connection is revealed. Glennard is anxious about how much his wife and Flamel know respectively about each other’s knowledge of the situation.

Part VIII.   Glennard is so worried about what Alexa might discover that he decides to move back into to New York so that he will have less personal contact with her because of social life in the city. A royalty cheque appears as a result of the publishing success, and he feels more guilty than ever. Friends report on a public reading of the Letters at the Waldorf Hotel. Glennard suspects that Flamel might have revealed his secret to Alexa.

Part IX.   Glennard gives Alexa the chance to discover his secret by letting her see a letter from his publisher. Alexa meanwhile continues to have more and more private meetings with Flamel.

Part X.   Time goes on, and Glennard still does not discuss his guilty secret with Alexa, as a consequence of which they begin to drift further and further apart. He sees a picture of Margaret Aubyn in a magazine and begins to imaginatively re-live their relationship.

Part XI.   Glennard goes to the cemetery and scatters flowers on Margaret Aubyn’s grave.

Part XII.   Glennard’s morbid connection with Margaret Aubyn continues and leads him into a solitary way of life. But he is suddenly shocked to encounter Alexa and Flamel together in an out-of-the-way part of Manhattan. He sends Flamel a cheque as commission for his part in placing the letters with a publisher. When Flamel pays him a surprise visit, Glennard reveals that the letters were written to him, and he lies to Flamel, claiming that Alexa was aware of the fact. Flamel rejects his arguments and his action as insulting, and tears up the cheque.

Part XIII.   Glennard wonders if Alexa does not realise the letters were written to him, and he begins to value her again. He challenges her in a jealous outburst over her meeting with Flamel, who she tells him is leaving for Europe. She also reveals her distaste for the letters and the ‘inheritance’ they provided for the establishment of their marriage. She argues that the money should be repaid. Glennard asks her if Flamel is leaving because he loves Alexa, and he admits that he has deceived Flamel, who has behaved honourably throughout the episode.

Part XIV.   Alexa makes sacrifices and they live frugally. Glennard calculates that it will take two years to repay the money. He is tortured by his inability to make amends to the dead Margaret Aubyn, and he wallows in self-pity. However, Alexa argues that Margaret Aubyn has given him the opportunity to ‘discover himself’, even if it was via a base action on his part.

The Touchstone – principal characters
Stephen Glennard a New York lawyer
Alexa Trent his fiancé, and later his wife
Mrs Margaret Aubyn a celebrated novelist, his former lover
Barton Flamel a rich aesthete and collector

Video documentary

Further reading

Louis Auchincloss, Edith Wharton: A Woman of her Time, New York: Viking, 1971,

Elizabeth Ammons, Edith Wharton’s Argument with America, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1982, pp.222. ISBN: 0820305138

Janet Beer, Edith Wharton (Writers & Their Work), New York: Northcote House, 2001, pp.99, ISBN: 0746308981

Millicent Bell (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp.232, ISBN: 0521485134

Alfred Bendixen and Annette Zilversmit (eds), Edith Wharton: New Critical Essays, New York: Garland, 1992, pp.329, ISBN: 0824078489

Eleanor Dwight, Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, ISBN: 0810927950

Gloria C. Erlich, The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton, California: University of California Press, 1992, pp.223, ISBN: 0520075838

Susan Goodman, Edith Wharton’s Women: Friends and Rivals, UPNE, 1990, pp.220, ISBN: 0874515246

Irving Howe, (ed), Edith Wharton: A collection of Critical Essays, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1986,

Jennie A. Kassanoff, Edith Wharton and the Politics of Race, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp.240, ISBN: 0521830893

Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton, London: Vintage, new edition 2008, pp.864, ISBN: 0099763516

R.W.B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography, New York: Harper and Rowe, 1975, pp.592, ISBN: 0880640200

James W. Tuttleton (ed), Edith Wharton: The Contemporary Reviews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp.586, ISBN: 0521383196

Candace Waid, Edith Wharton’s Letters from the Underworld, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1991,

Sarah Bird Wright, Edith Wharton A to Z: The Essential Reference to Her Life and Work, Fact on File, 1998, pp.352, ISBN: 0816034818

Cynthia Griffin Wolff, A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton, New York: Perseus Books, second edition 1994, pp.512, ISBN: 0201409186

Edith Wharton's writing

Edith Wharton’s writing

Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton - The Custom of the CountryThe Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.
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Edith Wharton - The House of MirthThe House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.
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Edith Wharton – web links

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

The Short Stories of Edith Wharton
This is an old-fashioned but excellently detailed site listing the publication details of all Edith Wharton’s eighty-six short stories – with links to digital versions available free on line.

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2014

The Tragic Muse

by

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

The Tragic Muse first appeared as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly from January 1889 through to 1890. The novel was then presented in three volumes published in America by the Boston publishers Houghton, Mifflin and Company in 1890, and in England by Macmillan at virtually the same time. It is one of the longest of Henry James’ novels, and deals with a subject dear to his heart – the relationships between life and art.

The Tragic Muse

first English edition in three volumes 1890

The Tragic Muse – critical commentary

The main theme

It is no surprise that this novel attracted very little attention when it was first published, and has generated so little citical commentary in the years since. The novel contains none of the careful organisation and tight structure of James’s more successful works, and its main theme of the artistic life versus social integration is not well realised.

Nick Dormer has a career as a member of parliament virtually handed to him on a silver dinner plate, but he turns it down in favour of his enthusiasm for painting. But his skill and his application as a painter are never convincingly presented. It is also difficult to believe that somebody would give up a parliamentary career on the strength of one painting which was deemed successful. He remains a weak and dilettantish figure throughout.

His sister Biddy’s activity as a sculptor is simply not realised at all. She merely hovers in her brother’s background as a fellow enthusiast.

Only Miriam’s transformation from pushy and ambitious would-be actress with few skills has any credibility attached to it. She develops via application and practice, through to a successful professional career. This part of the novel is altogether more convincing.

The length of the novel

This is possibly one of the slowest-moving of all James’s novels. It’s not only inordinately long (almost 200,000 words) but inordinately long-winded in terms of narrative technique and the recounting of events. The pace is so glacially slow at times that paragraph upon paragraph is devoted to issues as trivial as who might or might not turn up to a restaurant for lunch.

The result is a form of authorial ‘thinking out loud’ which includes multiple possibilities for almost every scene – all of which merely represent James’s point of view – not that of any of his characters. Thus the tale is essentially told, not shown.

James and the theatre

It is interesting to note that the overt subject matter of the novel (reflected in its title) of the stage and acting are topics which fascinated James and were to lead to his own ultimately disastrous excursions into playwrighting and the theatre. He converted his own early novel The American (1876) into a play which had modest success in the 1890s. On the strength of this he wrote a dozen plays, but all of them proved unsuccessful, and most famously his costume drama Guy Domville was booed off stage on its first night in England in 1895.

Nevertheless, although he was deeply wounded by the experience, he retained his interest in dramatic structures, and some of the works he conceived as dramas were later converted to novels which consist largely of conversations between the characters – such as The Other House (1896) and The Outcry.

It is also worth noting that almost all of his most carefully crafted works were later successfully adapted for the cinema – from Washington Square (1880) The Bostonians (1886) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881) to The Golden Bowl (1904). And a number of his shorter works have been turned into operas and plays, such as Owen Wingrave (1892) The Aspern Papers (1888) and The Turn of the Screw (1898).

However, despite the presence of drama in many of his novels and stories, the choice of theatre and acting as a serious topic for The Tragic Muse presents special difficulties for even so skilled a writer as James. It simply isn’t possible to give a convincing account of an evanescent art form such as the theatre in prose form.

He creates a persuasive sense that Miriam Rooth improves her acting skills as a result of learning from Madame Carré, and he evokes both the backstage and front of house atmosphere of the theatre very well, but the essence of what drama means eludes him.

The same is true in his choice of painting as Nick’s vocation. No matter how many brush strokes across canvass and paint-soaked rags are mentioned, it is virtually impossible to convey with words the visual quality of any work Nick produces. We are simply told that his portraits of Miriam (and he only paints two during the entire novel) are successful.

The actress

Contemporary readers might find it difficult to understand why Peter is confronted with a dilemma in his passion for Miriam. He is in love with her, but in order to make a relationship with her he must persuade her to give up the very thing in which she is passionately interested – the theatre.

During the nineteenth century (and into the middle of the twentieth) the profession of actress was regarded as not far short of prostitution. Peter is a diplomat – and could not possibly combine a relationship with an actress and his career.

There was a long-standing tradition of upper-class males who had casual and semi-official liaisons with actresses. One thinks of the Prince of Wales and Lillie Langtry (real name Emile Charlotte Le Breton). But these relationships could not normally be incorporated into polite society. In Peter’s own words of warning to Miriam “e;an actress would never be invited into the drawing room of a lady”e;.

So Peter realises that there is a total incompatibility between his duties and protocols as a diplomat and his passion for such a bohemian figure as an actress – a problem which he solves by his sudden decision to marry Biddy at the end of the novel.

Those who wish to take a psycho-analytic approach to the interpretation of the story will not fail to recognise that it is one (of many in James’s oeuvre) in which two men (very close friends, and cousins) are in love with the same woman – the magnetic figure of Miriam.

Loose ends

Given the enormous length of the novel, it is reasonable to complain that it contains far too many loose ends – lines of the plot which are unexamined, unfinished, or unexplained (to use the three part amplification figure which James employs throughout the narrative).

Nick’s elder brother, Percival Dormer, is suddenly mentioned towards the end of the novel, and for a moment it looks as if he will add to the significance of the family’s social fortunes – but he just as suddenly disappears and is never mentioned again. This is bad on two counts.

As the elder son, it is more likely that the family’s hopes would rest on him, not Nick. It is the elder son who would be expected to follow his father’s role in parliament, but all those hopes (and Mr Carteret’s money) are placed on Nick. These apparently minor details undermine a significant building block of the realist novel – social accuracy, plausibility, and consistency.

Biddy is an interesting character in embryo. She is spirited, independent, and like her brother inclined to practice art. But her activity as a sculptress is never persuasive and simply evaporates in the hurried and unsatisfying conclusion when she marries Peter and disappears to his next diplomatic posting.

Julia Dallow too is a potentially interesting character – a rich and attractive woman who wishes to engage in (Liberal) politics at a national and local level. She is the financial power behind the selection of a candidate for the constituency of Harsh – though it should be noted that this is a ‘rotten’ (more euphemistically a ‘pocket’) borough.

Gabriel Nash is like a Satan figure, coming in to plead the case for aestheticism and lure people (Nick in particular) away from their civic duty. Nash appears from nowhere, plants his ideas, then disappears again. Nobody knows where he lives, and when Nick tries to paint his portrait, he escapes, claiming to be ‘indestructible’.

The Tragic Muse – study resources

The Tragic Muse The Tragic Muse – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Tragic Muse The Tragic Muse – Library of America – Amazon US

The Tragic Muse The Tragic Muse – Kindle edition

The Tragic Muse The Tragic Muse – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

The Tragic Muse Henry James – biographical notes

The Tragic Muse Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

The Tragic Muse

The Tragic Muse – plot summary

Chapter I.   Nicholas (Nick) Dormer is on a cultural visit to Paris with his widowed mother and sisters. Lady Dormer has severe doubts about the moral effects of the modern art they are viewing. Nick however believes that all art contributes to a general good.

Chapter II.   Nick is the second eldest son of a politician and a would-be painter who is aware of his limitations. His sister Bridget (Biddy) wants to be a sculptor. They meet Gabriel Nash, who is an aphoristic conversationalist and an aesthete. Biddy is intrigued by him.

Chapter III.   Grace Dormer and her mother go to lunch and discuss people’s marriage and money prospects. They are joined by their relative Peter Sherringham who reveals that Nick is being tipped for his father’s old seat as a member of parliament.

Chapter IV.   Everyone thinks that Nick should ‘apply’ for the seat – but he needs money to do so (because it is a rotten borough). Nash is against the plan: he offers to introduce the family to his friend Miriam Rooth, an actress, and her mother. The theatre is considered as an artistic medium. Nick thinks it is a feeble art form; Sherringham is an enthusiastic supporter; and Lady Dormer disapproves of it completely.

Chapter V.   His mother wishes that Nick were more active and enthusiastic about the chance of the parliamentary seat, and feels disappointed not to find Julia Dallow available as a potential financial supporter. Meanwhile Peter defends his enthusiasm for the theatre to Nick.

Chapter VI.   The family have a restaurant dinner with Julia Dallow who is the power behind the appointment of a candidate at Harsh, her estate and parliamentary rotten borough. Julia and Nick then discuss his prospects. He is sceptical about standing: she is willing to put up the money in order to keep out the Tories.

Chapter VII.   Nick and Peter meet Miriam Rooth and her mother at the home of Madame Carré. Miriam delivers recitations, but Madame Carré does not think she has any real talent. Peter however is keen to support and promote her.

Chapter VIII.   Miriam and her mother are living in reduced circumstances. She gives another recital next day at an event organised by Peter. He is embarrassed by her performance and thinks her vulgar – but is nevertheless attracted to her.

Chapter IX.   Gabriel Nash talks to Nick about his personal theories of the aesthetic life – turning his own feelings into a form of art. Nick is going to stand for parliament, but wishes to be a painter. He feels the force of the family’s political tradition as a burden.

The Tragic Muse

Paris Street – Caillebot

Chapter X.   Peter feels oppressed by the promise he has made to help Miriam, and he also fears he might be falling in love with her. She gives another pushy and bad recital chez Madame Carré. Peter also feels that critics treat actresses badly.

Chapter XI.   Peter and Miriam discuss her life of poverty-in-exile and speaking styles in the theatre. He argues that she is without a genuine personality, but makes herself into a work of art, and is acting all the time.

Chapter XII.   Peter is conscious that the protocols of his career in the diplomatic service mean that he should keep his theatrical enthusiasm under firmer control. He disregards Mrs Rooth’s superficiality, and the summer passes with MIriam still taking lessons from Madame Carré. Peter tries to educate her and pays for better lodgings. He thinks he might rise above personal issues, but when he goes back to London at the end of the summer he realises that he is completely in love with Miriam.

Chapter XIII.   Nick is elected as Liberal Party member of parliament for Harsh. His mother wants him to marry Julia, who has financed his campaign. But Nick is reluctant, not really interested in politics, and wishes to retain his freedom. However, Lady Agnes argues that it would help her and his two unmarried sisters to establish themselves socially, and this touches his sense of family duty.

Chapter XIV.   When Nick stays at Harsh with Julia and starts engaging with his political duties, he realises how they are enhanced by her presence.

Chapter XV.   Nick rows out to an island on the lake at Julia’s estate at Harsh and proposes to Julia in a little Roman temple. They tease each other and he puts on a front of frivolity. Julia says his mother and sisters can live in one of her spare houses – Broadwood.

Chapter XVI.   Nick visits his benefactor Mr Carteret at Beauclere and appreciate centuries of tradition that the house, grounds, and an old Abbey represents. Carteret is a liberal traditionalist with a well-informed but limited range of interests.

Chapter XVII.   Next morning Carteret dispenses advice to Nick on his parliamentary responsibilities – which depresses Nick. But he approves of Nick’s marriage plans and promises to bestow money on him to give him financial independence. Nick however reveals that Julia wishes to wait for a year to be married.

Chapter XVIII.   Peter feels that his ambition to succeed in his career is seriously compromised by his feelings for Miriam – who would be entirely unsuitable and unacceptable as a diplomat’s wife. He returns to Paris and encourages Mrs Rooth to take Miriam to London. She has meanwhile been taken up by admirer Basil Dashwood, who Peter claims to be keen to meet.

XIX.   Peter follows Miriam and Dashwood to Madame Carré’s where she demonstrates that she has improved her skills. He befriends Dashwood and claims he has a potential engagement for Miriam arranged on the English stage.

Chapter XX.   Peter takes Miriam and her mother to the Theatre Francais where he gives them a tour of its professional inner mechanisms and architecture – the theatre as seen from an actor’s point of view.

The Tragic Muse

Le Théatre Francais

XXI   Peter flirts with Miriam and offers to take her away from the theatre. They meet the star actress Mademoiselle Voisin, who takes them to her dressing room. Miriam is very impressed by her urbane style and the tradition of theatre that she represents. Peter repeats his offer to marry her – arguing that if she remains as an actress she will be excluded from polite society.

XXII   Nick is frustrated by Julia’s making him wait to be married. She wishes to mingle with political society, whereas he wants to get away from it. They come close to arguing, but she finally agrees to marry him in five week’s time.

XXIII   Nick retreats to his artist’s studio for the Easter holidays, where he is visited by Gabriel Nash, who expounds his theories of aestheticism once more. On seeing Nick’s paintings and drawings he insists that Nick has a talent it would be immoral to neglect.

XXIV   Nash thinks Nick ought to give up parliament and devote himself to painting. Nick is flattered but sceptical. Nash suggests that Nick should paint Miriam’s portrait.

XXV   Nick has begun to paint Miriam’s portrait. She has become successful on the stage and patronises Peter. Nick is determined not to fall in love with her.

XXVI   Miriam recounts the events of her theatrical success to Nick. It has been made possible by Peter’s buying the rights to a play, then giving them to her as a source of income. He continues with the portrait – only to be suddenly be confronted by Julia, who is shocked by the intimate scene she stumbles upon.

XXVII   That evening Julia explains in a jealous fit that she thinks Nick prefers art to the political life she has created for him. She feels he has betrayed her, breaks off their relationship, calls on her old friend Mrs Gresham, and goes off to Paris.

XXVIII   Julia meets her brother Peter in Paris and encourages him to pay attention to Biddy Dormer. Peter goes to London and tries to locate Miriam without success, but when he goes to Nick’s studio, he finds Biddy there.

The Tragic Muse

Sarah Bernhardt

XXIX   Peter and Biddy discuss Nick and Julia’s problems, the fact that Lady Agnes is upset because none of her children are married. They also consider the value of art, for which Nick is going to give up his parliamentary seat. Biddy is sculpting and thinks she will never marry. They look at Nick’s portrait of Marian, which is very good.

XXX   Peter takes Biddy and her friend to the theatre to see Miriam. He finds her transcendentally accomplished and develops grandiose visions of a publicly subsidised theatre. He discusses Miriam’s rise to fame with Dashwood, and feels patronised by him.

XXXI   Peter spends the afternoon with Miriam and her arty hangers-on. She expands upon her ambitions. He becomes her regular coach and dramaturg. He regards Dashwood as a lightweight, but remains ambiguous in his feelings towards Gabriel Nash.

XXXII   Mr Carteret becomes ill, and Nick is summoned to Beauclere. He feels ill at ease, partly because of his non-marriage to Julia, and partly because of his intention to quit parliament. Carteret summons him to tell him something important.

XXXIII   Carteret want to know about Nick’s marriage to Julia, on which his promised financial settlement depends. Nick gives him an embarrassed explanation of that particular truth, which upsets the old man. Later the same day he demands the full story, and Nick is forced to reveal his plan to quit politics – as a result of which he will forfeit sixty thousand pounds.

XXXIV   Nick is forced to reveal the whole story to his mother, who is mortified with disappointment. She feels that they might have to give up living at Broadwood following the rift with Julia and that Nick’s loss of Carteret’s legacy, plus giving up parliament is a shame the whole family must bear.

XXXV   Nick is tempted to go abroad, but realises that he must stay and face the consequences of his actions. He is visited by Gabriel Nash, who reveals that Peter is in love with Miriam Rooth, who in her turn is in love with Nick – ever since the meeting and silent clash with Julia in the studio.

XXXVI   Peter and Nash discuss Miriam’s prospects for success, and the fact that she is in love with Nick. Nash opines that she would give up the theatre for Nick – but that there would probably be a heavy price to pay.

XXXVII   In Miriam’s bohemian late afternoon salon she bandies with Peter, flatters Nick, and treats Dashwood like a skivvy. Peter feels mildly jealous of her praise for his friend and cousin Nick.

XXXVIII   Peter wonders why he feels any rivalry with his friend Nick when (theoretically) he has nothing at stake with Miriam. He applies for a new diplomatic posting and is given a position as ambassador to a state in Central America.

XXXIX   Peter goes to see Lady Agnes, who is still eaten up with Nick’s giving up parliament and his loss of prospects. She takes an exaggerated interest in Peter’s career development and salary, which he realises is a poorly disguised wish that he should marry her daughter Biddy.

The Tragic Muse

Sarah Benhardt as Cleopatra

XL   Whilst Peter is preparing himself for a move to the tropics, he is summoned by Miriam to a dress rehearsal next morning. He goes, and is obviously under her spell.

XLI   She summons him again the following day for a private assignation – but then forgets what she wished to discuss with him. He ends up confessing that he is leaving because he is desperately in love with her, and because he realises that a relationship with her is not possible.

XLII   Nick has begun to regret giving up parliament, and doesn’t think he has any genuine artistic talent either. He is visited by Peter, who has conflicting social engagements with Miriam and Lady Agnes.

XLIII   Biddy arrives at the studio and there is banter with Peter and Nick – then Miriam arrives with her mother. Peter and Biddy go shopping and discuss Miriam, on which topic Biddy full of practical good sense.

XLIV   Arriving at the studio, Miriam and her mother flatter Nick – and themselves. Nick continues a second portrait of Miriam promised to Peter whilst Mrs Rooth evaluates his belongings. The two women have invited Biddy to visit them, and they discuss Miriam’s strategy for dealing with Peter.

XLV   In the evening the first night of Miriam’s new play is a resounding success. Peter refuses to go back stage with Nick in the intervals, but at the final curtain he sends a request to Miriam on a visiting card – which she accepts.

XLVI   Peter goes back to Miriam’s house, where she joins him. He offers to marry her if she will give up the theatre. She refuses. They argue about the social and moral merits of the theatre. In desperation he asks for re-consideration in a year’s time. Mrs Rooth then arrives and promises to help him.

XLVII   Nick continues to drift morally, but when Julia returns from her travels abroad he feels that the family should give back the house they have borrowed from her. Julia accepts their offer, but then invites Biddy to live with her at Harsh. She then moves back into Broadwood and asks Lady Agnes and Grace to join her there again.

XLVIII   Miriam continues to be more and more celebrated, but Nick’s second portrait of her is unfinished. She visits for a sitting, flirts and philosophises with him, then leaves for a theatrical tour of the provinces.

XLIX   Gabriel Nash visits Nick’s studio and predicts that Nick will reach a compromise with Julia and will end up a painter of society portraits. Nick begins to paint Nash’s portrait, but Nash feels uncomfortable, argues that he is ‘indestructible’ and then suddenly disappears – never to return.

L   Some months later Nick spends Xmas at Broadwood with his mother and sisters, then goes to Paris for six weeks. Biddy visits Nick’s studio to tell him that Julia wants him to paint her portrait. Miriam suddenly appears with Dashwood, ready for the first night of her new role as Juliet. She arranges a box for Nick and Biddy.

LI   At the theatre that night Peter suddenly appears, back from his posting in the Americas. Nick reveals to him that Miriam has just married Dashwood. Peter immediately switches his attention to Biddy, then marries her and takes her on to his next posting abroad.

Henry James's study

Henry James’s study

The Tragic Muse – principal characters
I an un-named narrator who makes occasional appearances
Lady Agnes Dormer a haughty and traditionalist widow
Percival Dormer her eldest son, who never appears
Nicholas Dormer her younger son, a reluctant politician and would-be painter
Grace Dormer her eldest daughter
Bridget (Biddy) Dormer her youngest daughter, and would-be sculptor
Peter Sherringham a family cousin and diplomat, with an enthusiasm for the theatre
Mrs Julia Dallow Peter’s sister, a rich widow
Gabriel Nash an aesthete friend of Nick’s from Oxford
Miriam Rooth a half-Jewish actress
Mrs Rooth her mother, a widow
Rudolph Roth Miriam’s father, an artistic stockbroker
Madame Carré an old French actress
Mr Carteret a family friend and financial supporter of Nick
Mts Gresham a general factotum to Julia at Harsh
Basil Dashwood actor and admirer of Miriam
Further reading

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 – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2014

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

The Tree of Knowledge

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Tree of Knowledge first appeared in the volume of short stories published under the collective title The Soft Side in 1900 – a remarkably productive year for Henry James. It was a period which saw the publication of The Great Good Place, Maud-Evelyn, Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie, The Abasement of the Northmores, The Third Person, The Tone of Time, and the story which is widely regarded as his finest – The Beast in the Jungle. He wrote all of these (and more) in addition to working on his next novel, The Sacred Fount (1901).

The Tree of Knowledge

The artist’s studio

The Tree of Knowledge – critical commentary

This is one of many stories James wrote about artists and their varying degrees of success. Morgan Mallow is a hopelessly untalented sculptor who is blind to his own lack of skill but has apparently persuaded the people around him otherwise. The main point of the story is first his son’s realisation that his father is a fraud, and then the revelation that his devoted and supportive wife has been aware of his artistic failure all along.

The most noteworthy thing about the story is the lofty and droll manner in which James conveys Mallow’s lack of talent as a sculptor.

The room they sat in was adorned with sundry specimens of the Master’s genius…They were indeed of dimensions not customary in the products of the chisel and had the singularity that, if the objects and features intended to be small looked too large, the objects and features intended to be large looked too small…The creations [ …] stood about on pedestals and brackets, on tables and shelves, a little staring white population, heroic, idyllic, allegoric, mythic, symbolic, in which “scale” had so strayed and lost itself that the public square and the chimney-piece seemed to have changed places, the monumental being all diminutive and the diminutive all monumental

The Tree of Knowledge – study resources

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

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

The Tree of Knowledge Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Tree of Knowledge Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Tree of Knowledge The Tree of Knowledge – Digireads reprint edition – Amazon UK

The Tree of Knowledge The Tree of Knowledge – eBook formats at Gutenberg Consortia

The Tree of Knowledge The Tree of Knowledge – read the story on line

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

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

The Tree of Knowledge

The Tree of Knowledge – plot summary

Part I. Peter Brench is a bachelor and a writer of sorts who is very friendly with Morgan Mallow, a hopelessly untalented sculptor who gives himself great airs and lives on his wife’s money. Brench has been a long time admirer of Mrs Mallow and is godfather to her son Lance. Brench keeps to himself his belief that Mallow lacks talent, whilst Mrs Mallow helps to support the idea that her husband is an unrecognised genius.

Part II. When Lance comes of age he announces that he is giving up studying at Cambridge in favour of going to Paris to become an artist of some kind. Brench tries to dissuade him – without success. Mallow meanwhile recieves a commission from a wealthy Canadian to carve a tombstone.

Part III. Lance eventually returns from Paris, revealing to Peter Brench that he now realises the truth about his father’s lack of talent. Brench shares his own opinions, but asks him to conceal the truth for the sake of his mother’s feelings.

Part IV. Lance returns to Paris, but his father begins to put pressure on him to produce some tangible evidence of success. When Lance feels he can longer remain silent regarding his father’s fraudulence, he reveals to Brench that his mother has confessed to him that she too all along has secretly known about her husband’s lack of talent.

Principal characters
Peter Brench bachelor (50) and ‘writer’
Morgan Mallow his friend, a sculptor
Mrs Mallow Mallow’s wife
Lance (Lancelot) their son
Egidio their Italian footman

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

Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2012

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The Trial

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Kafka’s one completed novel masterpiece

The Trial was the only novel Kafka ever more-or-less completed during his own lifetime. Most of his other work is renowned for being fragmentary and incomplete. But even so, its chapters were kept in separate folders and he gave no indication of the order in which they were to appear. The parts were assembled and published by his friend Max Brod in 1925, the year after Kafka’s death. It is a novel which seems to give an amazingly premonitory account of the horrors in the modern totalitarian world.

The TrialIt deals with the arbitrary nature of power threatening the freedom of the individual and the crushing of every attempt to understand its workings. The novel opens with a sentence which has become famous – heralding the nightmare to come: “Somebody must have been telling lies about Joseph K, for one morning without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” This is the ‘knock on the door’ which was to become an everyday experience for millions in the years that followed in the totalitarian worlds of Stalin’s Russia and the Nazi period of German’s history. Needless to say, it has also become commonplace throughout the world ever since – from Franco’s Spain and Pinochet’s Chile to China, North Korea, and today’s middle-East.

Joseph K’s offense is never explained to him, and the illogical nature of his helplessly vulnerable condition is pursued relentlessly throughout the narrative. Indeed, it gets worse with each of his efforts to understand or do anything about it. He appeals to all forms of bureaucratic authority for help and clarification, but gets nowhere.

Of course, no trial in the ordinary sense of that word takes place. He never discovers the precise charge which is made against him. Once he is arrested, an examining magistrate inquires into the case against him – and the process [Der Prozess is the German title of the novel] gradually merges into the verdict.

Joseph K visits a number of people and even the court itself in pursuit of his self defense. Every venue seems more bizarre than the last. A courtroom which is more like a madhouse; a lawyer’s office which seems more like a derelict cathedral; and a painter’s studio which is packed with lubricious young girls.

Many possible interpretations of the story have been discussed at length in the critical writing on Kafka. First there were the religious and existential approaches to explain why Joseph K feels guilty, even when he doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong. Then the psychoanalytic and biographical theories, based on guilt about his family or his fiancee Felice Bauer to whom he was twice engaged. Western Europeans favoured the existential approach, whereas the old Eastern bloc countries understandably read Kafka as expressing the fate of the individual denied freedom by bureaucratic tyrannies. Both approaches can be equally convincing, and more are possible.

These new editions of Kafka’s main works from Oxford University Press offer fresh translations, and they come with extended introductory essays, full explanatory notes, a bibliography, and both a biographical preface on Kafka and a chronology of his life. They also explain the very complex provenance of the text, and included as a bonus are fragments from the novel discovered amongst Kafka’s papers after his death. Generations of scholars have been unable to decide exactly where they belong in the novel, so they are offered as appendices.

This is one of the key texts in early twentieth century modernism. Kafka was unlike any other writer before or since (even though he has many pale imitators). If you have not read Kafka before, it’s probably better to start with some of his short stories – such as Metamorphosis. When you’re ready, this novel will be waiting for you – like a nightmare ready to happen.

1962 film version – directed by Orson Wells

The Trial Buy the book at Amazon UK

The Trial Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2009

Franz Kafka, The Trial, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.191, ISBN: 0199238294

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The Trial

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tutorial, characters, video, resource materials

The Trial is Kafka’s one indisputably successful novel – a haunting and original study in existential anxiety, paranoia, and persecution. Joseph K is accused one day of being guilty – but not told what crime he has committed. He wrestles hopelessly with legal officials and a nightmare-like court which acts on arbitrary rules, striving to find justice. In the end he fails, only to be killed ‘like a dog’. Kafka gave expression to modern anxiety three decades before most people even started feeling it. This is a novel which stands outside literary norms – a superb achievement of literary modernism. Be prepared for black humour as well as mind-bending contradictions and deeply etched literary expressionism.

Franz Kafka - portrait

Franz Kafka

The Trial – plot summary

Joseph K is a senior bank clerk who lives in lodgings. On his thirtieth birthday he is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting. He is not taken away, however, but left at home to await instructions from the Committee of Affairs.

K goes to visit the magistrate, but instead is forced to have a meeting with an attendant’s wife. Looking at the Magistrate’s books, he discovers a cache of pornography.

He returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag.

Later, in a store room at his own bank, K discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a flogger for asking K. for bribes, as a result of complaints K. previously made about them to the Magistrate. K. tries to argue with the flogger, saying that the men need not be whipped, but the flogger cannot be swayed. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he had found it the day before, including the Whipper and the two agents.

The TrialK is visited by his uncle, who is a friend of a lawyer. The uncle seems distressed by K’s predicament. At first sympathetic, he becomes concerned K is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces K to an advocate, who is attended by Leni, a nurse, who K’s uncle suspects is the advocate’s mistress. K. has a sexual encounter with Leni, whilst his uncle is talking with the Advocate and the Chief Clerk of the Court, much to his uncle’s anger, and to the detriment of his case.

K visits the advocate and finds him to be a capricious and unhelpful character. He returns to his bank but finds that his colleagues are trying to undermine him.

K is advised by one of his bank clients to visit Titorelli, a court painter, for advice. Titorelli has no official connections, yet seems to have a deep understanding of the process. K learns that, to Titorelli’s knowledge, not a single defendant has ever been acquitted. He sets out what K’s options are, but they all consist merely of delaying tactics to stretch out his case as long as possible before the inevitable ‘Guilty’ verdict.

K decides to take control of his own life and visits his advocate with the intention of dismissing him. At the advocate’s office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K some insight from a client’s perspective. Block’s case has continued for five years and he appears to have been virtually enslaved by his dependence on the advocate’s meaningless and circular advice. The advocate mocks Block in front of K for his dog-like subservience.

The TrialK is asked to tour an Italian client around local places of cultural interest, but the Italian client short of time asks K. to tour him around only the cathedral, setting a time to meet there. When the client doesn’t show up, K explores the cathedral which is empty except for an old woman and a church official. K decides to leave as a priest K notices seems to be preparing to give a sermon from a small second pulpit, lest it begin and K be compelled to stay for its entirety. Instead of giving a sermon, the priest calls out K’s name, although K has never known the priest. The priest works for the court, and tells K a fable, (which has been published separately as ‘Before the Law’) that is meant to explain his situation, but instead causes confusion, and implies that K’s fate is hopeless.

Over the course of the year, the stress of the case weighs on K He begins a gradual decline from confident to a nervous state similar to that of the client Block, and those of other broken defendants he meets in the explosively hot law offices. At the bank, he is humiliated by his inability to handle an important client as he is constantly exhausted from worry.

On the last day of K’s thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry where he is expected to kill himself, but he cannot. The two men then execute him by plunging a knife into his heart.

Study resources

Red button The Trial – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Red button The Trial – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Red button The Trial – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon UK

Red button The Trial – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon US

Red button The Trial – Dover Thrift – Amazon UK

Red button The Trial – Dover Thrift – Amazon US

Red button The Trial – Everyman’s Library Classics – Amazon UK

Red button The Trial – Everyman’s Library Classics – Amazon US

Red button The Trial – eBook formats at Project Gutenburg

Red button The Trial – Orson Welles’ 1967 film version – Amazon UK

Red button The Trial – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

Red button The Trial – audioBook at Project Gutenberg

Red button The Trial – book review

Red button The Trial – as a graphic novel

Red button Kafka: A Short Introduction – book review

Red button The Trial – 1992 film version by Harold Pinter

Henry James The Cambridge Companion to Kafka – Amazon UK

Principal characters
Joseph K a senior bank clerk
Fraulein Burstner a boarder in the same house as K
Fraulein Montag a friend of Fraulein Burstner
Frau Grubach proprietress of the house where K lives
Uncle Karl K’s uncle and former guardian
Herr Huld a pompous and pretentious lawyer
Leni Herr Huld’s seductive nurse
Vice-President K’s rival at the bank
President the manager of the bank
Rudi Block an accused man, former grain-dealer
Titorelli a court painter
Kafka’s writing

Franz Kafka - manuscript page

a page of Kafka’s manuscript

Franz Kafka: An Illustrated LifeFranz Kafka: Illustrated Life This is a photographic biography that offers an intimate portrait in an attractive format. A lively text is accompanied by over 100 evocative images, many in colour and some previously unpublished. They depict the author’s world – family, friends, and artistic circle in old Prague – together with original book jackets, letters, and other ephemera. This is an excellent starting point for beginners which captures fin de siecle Europe beautifully.

Franz Kafka greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

The Trial – film version

Orson Welles wrote and directed (and acted in) a magnificent film version of The Trial in 1962. It’s a faithful dramatisation of the novel which captures perfectly the brooding, nightmarish world of the original. Much of it was filmed in the old French government buildings of the Quai d’Orsay before it was transformed into the present museum.

A young Anthony Perkins gives a superb, haunting performance as the angst-ridden protagonist, Joseph K. The rest of the cast features female icons from the 1960s including Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, and Romy Schneider. Welles’ favourite actor Akim Tamiroff is also on hand, and Welles himself plays the Advocate. This is a film which is very faithful to the original novel. It begins with Orson Wells providing voice-over to a comic-book version of the parable ‘Before the Law’.

Film version cast list
Anthony Perkins Joseph K
Jeanne Moreau Fraulein Burstner
Romy Schneider Leni
Elsa Martinelli Hilda
Orson Welles The Advocate
Akim Tamiroff Bloch
Madeleine Robinson Frau Grubach

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

Photomontage

Kafka, family photos, and old Prague

Further reading

Red button Jeremy Adler, Franz Kafka (Overlook Illustrated Lives), Gerald Duckworth, 2004.

Red button Mark Anderson. Kafka’s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de Siecle, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992

Red button Louis Begley, The Tremendous Words I have Inside my Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay, Atlas Illustrated editions, 2008.

Red button Harold Bloom, Franz Kafka: Modern Critical Essays, New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Red button Harold Bloom, Franz Kafka (Bloom’s Major Novelists), Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.

Red button Elizabeth Boa, Kafka: Gender, Class, and Race in the Letters and Fictions, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

Red button Max Brod, Franz Kafka: A Biography, Da Capo Press, 1995.

Red button Max Brod (ed), The Diaries of Franz Kafka, Schoken Books, 1988.

Red button Elias Canetti, Kafka’s Other Trial: The Letters to Felice, Schocken Books, 1989.

Red button Stanley Corngold, Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka, Princeton University Press, 2006.

Red button W.J. Dodd (ed), Kafka: The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle, London: Longman, 1995.

Red button Carolin Duttlinger, Kafka and Photography, Oxford: Oxford Universit Press, 2007.

Red button Angel Flores (ed), The Kafka Debate, New York: Gordian Press, 1977.

Red button Sander Gilman, Franz Kafka (Critical Lives), Reaktion Books, 2007.

Red button Sander Gilman, Franz Kafka: The Jewish Patient, London: Routledge, 1995.

Red button Ronald Gray, Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice Hall, 1962.

Red button Ronald Hayman, A Biography of Kafka, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001.

Red button Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks, Exact Change, 1998.

Red button Franz Kafka, The Trial (Complete Audiobooks), Naxos Audiobooks, 2007.

Red button David Zane Mairowitz, Introducing Kafka, Icon Books, 2007.

Red button Julian Preece (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Kafka, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Red button Ronald Spiers, and Beatrice Sandberg, Franz Kafka, London: Macmillan, 1997.

Red button Walter H. Sokel, The Myth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Kafka, Wayne State University Press, 2001.

Red button Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Red button Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature, Clarendon Press, 1987.

Red button James Rolleston (ed), A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, Camden House, 2006.

Red button Michael Wood, Franz Kafka (Writers and Their Work), Northcote House, 1998.

 

Mont Blanc pen - Kafka edition

Mont Blanc – special Franz Kafka edition

Other works by Franz Kafka

MetamorphosisMetamorphosis (1915) is truly one of Kafka’s masterpieces – a stunning parable which lends itself to psychological, sociological, or existential interpretations. It’s the tale of a man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a giant insect. His family are horrified, gradually disown him, and he dies of neglect, with a rotting apple lodged in his side. Franz Kafka is one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early twentieth century. He was a novelist and writer of short stories whose works came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth century literature.

Franz Kafka Metamorphosis Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka Metamorphosis Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The Man who DisappearedAmerika (also known as The Man who Disappeared) is Kafka’s first attempt at a novel. He is renowned for documenting the horrors of modern life, but Kafka also had a lighter and amusing side. This is incomplete, like so much else he wrote. It’s the story of Karl Rossmann who after an embarrassing sexual misadventure is expelled from his European home and goes to live in an imaginary United States (which of course Kafka had never visited). In fact it’s a reverse ‘Rags to Riches’ story, because Karl starts his engagement with the American Dream quite successfully – but by the end of the novel he is destitute. The story is deeply symbolic – as usual – and an interesting supplement to the central texts. The first chapter is frequently anthologised as ‘The Stoker’.
Franz Kafka The Man who Disappeared Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka The Man who Disappeared Buy the book at Amazon US

Franz Kafka – web links

Kafka Franz Kafka at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews and study guides on the major works, video presentations and documentaries, adaptations for cinema and television, and links to Kafka archives.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats – in both English and German.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, survey of the stories and novels, publishing history, translations, critical interpretation, and extensive bibliographies.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Franz Kafka video Kafka in Love
Video photomontage featuring portraits of Kafka, his friends and family, and locations in Prague – with a rather schmaltzy soundtrack in Yiddish and English.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka-Metamorphosis
A public Wiki dedicated to Kafka and his work, featuring the short stories, interpretations, and further web links.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka Society of America
Academic group with annual meetings and publications. Also features links to other Kafka-related sites

Franz Kafka web links Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Academic group based at Oxford University that tracks current research and meetings. [Doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012.]

Franz Kafka web links The Kafka Project
Critical editions and translations of Kafka’s work in several languages, plus articles, literary criticism, bibliographies.

Franz Kafka Tribute to Franz Kafka
Individual fan site (created by ‘Herzogbr’) featuring a collection of texts, reviews, and enthusiast essays. Badly in need of updating, but contains some interesting gems.

Kafka photos Finding Kafka in Prague
Quirky compilation of photos locating Kafka in his home town – with surrealist additions and weird sound track.

Red button Who Owns Kafka?
Essay by Judith Butler from the London Review of Books on the contentious issues of ownership of Kafka’s manuscripts where they are currently held in Israel – complete with podcast.

Red button The Kafka Archive – latest news
Guardian newspaper report on the suitcase full of Kafka and Max Brod’s papers released by Israeli library.

Red button Franz Kafka: an illustrated life
Book review of a charming short biography with some unusual period photos of Kafka and Prague.

© Roy Johnson 2010

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