tutorial, commentary, web links, and study resources

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

The American Civil War 1861-1865

A Most Extraordinary Case – critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

A Most Extraordinary Case – ptudy resources

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

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

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

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

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

A Most Extraordinary Case – principal characters

Henry James’s study

A Most Extraordinary Case – plot summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tutorial, commentary, and study resources

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

A New England winter scene

A New England Winter – plot summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Principal characters

Study resources

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

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

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

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

A New England Winter – paperback edition – Amazon UK

A New England Winter – paperback edition – Amazon US

A New England Winter – read the original publication

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

A New England Winter – further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oxford University

A Passionate Pilgrim – critical commentary

Travelogue

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

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

Ghost story

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

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

Parallels

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

Study resources

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

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

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

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

A Passionate Pilgrim – eBook formats at Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

A Passionate Pilgrim – plot summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Principal characters

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Problem – critical commentary

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

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

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

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

A Problem – study resources

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

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

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

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

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

A Problem – plot summary

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

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

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

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

Principal characters

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
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The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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© Roy Johnson 2013

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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