The Portable Henry James

by James, Henry; Auchard, John

• ISBN13: 9780142437674
• ISBN10: 0142437670
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-12-30
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Henry James wrote with an imperial elegance of style, whether his subjects were American innocents or European sophisticates, incandescent women or their vigorous suitors. His omniscient eye took in the surfaces of cities, the nuances of speech, dress, and manner, and, above all, the microscopic interactions, hesitancies, betrayals, and self-betrayals that are the true substance of relationships. The entirely new Portable Henry Jamesprovides an unparalleled range of this great body of work: seven major tales, including Daisy Miller, The Turn of the Screw, "The Beast in the Jungle," and "The Jolly Corner"; a sampling of revisions James made to some of his most famous work; travel writing; literary criticism; correspondences; autobiography; descriptions of the major novels; and parodies by famous contemporaries, including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, and Graham Greene.

Author Biography

Henry James (1843-1916) was born in New York City and entered the law school at Harvard in 1862. He moved to London in 1875 and became a British citizen in 1915. He wrote some twenty novels, many short stories, and a staggering number of letters. John Auchard is professor of English at the University of Maryland, and he edited the Penguin Classics edition of James's Italian Hours.

Table of Contents

The Portable Henry James Introduction
Chronology
Acknowledgments

I. Fiction

Daisy Miller: A Study
"Brooksmith"
"The Real Thing"
"The Middle Years"

The Turn of the Screw
"The Beast in the Jungle
"The Jolly Corner"

II. Revisions

Daisy Miller: 1879 and 1909

The Portrait of a Lady: 1881 and 1908

III. Travel

From English Hours
"London at Midsummer"

From Italian Hours
"Two Old Houses and Three Young Women"
"The Saint's Afternoon and Others"

From The American Scene
"The Bowery and Thereabouts"

from "Boston"
"France"

IV. Criticism

On Whitman
"brute sublimity"

On Baudelaire
"This is not Evil...it is simply the nasty!"

From Hawthorne
"No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church"

On Emerson
"salt is wanting"

"The Art of Fiction"
"the chamber of consciousness"
"Try to be one...on whom nothing is lost!"

From "the Question of Our Speech"
"Our national use of the vocal sound, in men and women alike, is slovenly"

From "The Lesson of Balzac"
"plated and burnished and bright"

On Shakespeare
the "absolute value of Style"

From the Preface to Roderick Hudson
"Really, universally, relations stop nowhere"

From the Preface to The Portrait of a Lady
"The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million"

From the Preface to The Tragic Muse
"large loose baggy monsters"

V. Autobiography

The peaches d'antan
from A Small Boy and Others

The dancing teacher Madame Dubreil
from A Small Boy and Others

A daguerreotype taken by Mathew Brady
from A Small Boy and Others

The Galerie d'Apollon
from A Small Boy and Others

An obscure hurt
from Notes of a Son and Brother

The death of Minnie Temple
from Notes of a Son and Brother

At the grave of Alice James
from The Complete Notebooks

VI. Correspondence

A thirteen-year-old in Paris writes to a young friend
To Edgar Van Winkle; 1856

On the Grand Tour
To William James; October 30, 1869

Henry James, expatriate
To the James family; November 1, 1875

The literary scene in Paris
To William Dean Howells; May 28, 1876

Growing fame
To Miss Abbey Alger; November 21, 1881

The friendship with Robert Louis Stevenson
To Robert Louis Stevenson; July 31, 1888

The death of Alice James
To William James; March 8, 1892

The friendship with Hendrik C. Andersen
To Hendrik C. Andersen; February 9, 1902
To Hendrik C. Andersen; February 28, 1902

The death of William James
To Thomas Sergeant Perry; September 2, 1910
To H. G. Wells; September 11, 1910

The publication of Boon, and the break with H. G. Wells
To H. G. Wells; July 6, 1915
To H. G. Wells; July 10, 1915

VII. Definition and Description

An American encounters some aristocrats
from The American

An ambitious young Frenchwoman
from The American

Sarah Bernhardt, the muse of the newspaper
from "The Comedie Francaise in London"

An American education
from The Portrait of a Lady

An American is corrected on what constitutes "the self"
from The Portrait of a Lady

An absolutely unmarried woman
from The Bostonians

Philistine decor
from The Spils of Poynton

The really rich
from The Wings of the Dove

New York identity
from The Wings of the Dove

A Venetian majordomo
from The Wings of the Dove

Like a scene from a Maeterlinck play
from The Wings of the Dove

A private thought
from the Wings of the Dove

The seduction of Europe
from the Ambassadors

A femme du monde
from The Ambassadors

An intimate recollection of a beautiful woman
from The Golden Bowl

Colossal immodesty
from The American Scene

The individual Jew
from The American Scene

New York City Hall
from The American Scene

The absence of penetralia
from The American Scene

New York Power
from The American Scene

American teeth
from The American Scene

A young priest apart from the Roman carnival
from Italian Hours

VIII. Names

IX. Parody

Frank Moore Colby
from "In Darkest James"

Max Beerbohm
" 'The Mote in the Middle Distance,' by H*nry J*mes"

X. Legacy

W.H. Auden
"At the Grave of Henry James"

Joseph Conrad
from "Henry James: An Appreciation"

T.S. Eliot
from "In Memory"

Graham Greene
from "Henry James: The Private Universe"

Ezra Pound
from "Henry James"

Edith Wharton
from A Backward Glance

Virginia Woolf
from "Review of The Letters of Henry James"

Suggestions for Further Reading

Selected Bibliography