Double Double

by Henry James, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe

The idea of the Double is one familiar to people interested in psychology, mythology, literature, and art. It stems from the simple fact that we as humans wonder if there might be, or is indeed, someone who is very much like us.Today the term Double or Doppelgänger (literally Double-goer) is often used to refer to a person who simply looks like another. This, however, is only a pale shadow of what the terms signifies to writers, artists, and other intellectuals. For them it refers to the idea that if one meets one’s Double, it will bring about ill-luck or even death. Perhaps the most famous example of this was the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s claim to have met his own Double shortly before he died in 1822.In recent times, we have seen numerous examples of the Double in popular culture. In movies such as The Nutty Professor, we see the nerdy Sherman Klump (originally Jerry Lewis’s character Julius Kelp transformed into the suave Buddy Love, and in Spider-Man 3, we see Spider-Man wrestle with his conscience when he is transformed into the Dark Spider-Man. Likewise, television brings us countless examples, including Star Trek’s Captain Kirk who meets up with darker versions of himself in the episodes titled Enemy Within and Mirror Mirror, Bewitched’s Samantha Stevens who is sometimes pitted against her freewheeling cousin Serena, and Seinfeld’s own character of Jerry Seinfeld’s who meets a woman, Melanie, who is so much like himself that he asks her to marry him. Though most of these doublings are light-hearted, they attest to the enduring power of the idea.In this edition are included six of the most famous works of Doubles in literature, each written by an author who is among the best the world has •The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad•William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe•Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville•The Jolly Corner by Henry James•The Book of the Duchess by Geoffrey Chaucer•The Double by Fyodor DostoyevskyAlso included is a short story by contemporary author Peter Salvia entitled Double Double.This book is published by The Rosebud Press, which is part of The Primavera Press.

122 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 28, 2012

About the author

Henry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."