Henry James: Major Stories and Essays: A Library of America College Edition

by Henry James

Stories:
Daisy Miller: A study --
An international episode --
The Aspern papers- -
The real thing- -
The middle years- -
The figure in the carpet- -
The turn of the screw- -
The great good place- -
The beast in the jungle- -
The jolly corner- -
Essays:
Walt Whitman: review of drum-taps from Hawthorne: from II. Early Manhood: "I have said that Hawthorne was an observer of small things"- -
V. The three American novels- -
The art of fiction- -
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Review of A memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by James Elliot Cabot- -
The question of the opportunities- -
The lesson of Balzac- -
William shakespeare: Introduction to the Tempest- -
Preface to The portrait of a lady.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Essays

705 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1908

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."

Reviews

[Zo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading James one feels caught between two safe harbors. On one side is the literature of the 19th-century. It is a fundamentally different world; a world to escape to. Yes it is vast, but from Austen to Dickens to Flaubert to Tolstoy, there is a similarity in the world the characters inhabit, and a similarity in authorial approaches to handling those characters. Across the way is the literature of the 20th-century, beginning with Modernism, and spiraling into all the chaos of its wake. Again, at the risk of being reductive, there is a connecting thread in the way novelists position themselves as dealing with an alien external cultural world, and the way interiority is used to explore one's place in an incomprehensible culture. James sits in the strait between these two terrains, likely in a very regal sailboat, as befits his style. There is a feeling of a detached reality that reminds of the 19th-century, but the interiority, and the slightest hints of a changing social reality, peek over at the 20th.

No writer is more thoroughly aristocratic in his being and his preoccupations; and all the good and ill that comes with such an appellation suits James. His stories are eminent explorations of character -- and the social worlds in which his characters move about. James plumbs the simplest of conversations for all their depth, casting a light on the emotional drama that exists in everyone's lives. He has an affinity for the social upstart. Examining those who break the code is always a method of reflecting on how social society operates, and creating indelible protagonists along the way. This volume also reveals James' preoccupations with hidden secrets, meanings, and revelations. The Aspern Papers, The Real Thing, The Turn of the Screw, The Figure in the Carpet, and The Beast in the Jungle all have central gambits, unresolved questions, that propel their narratives forward. James delights in that quest, using all his powers of allusive but inconclusive dialogue to tantalize the reader. I find keeping up with his meaning on a sentence-to-sentence level harder than any other prominent novelist I've read, but there is something delightful about trying to keep track of his sentences, like moving about an elaborately arranged garden. The secret-based stories are an embodiment of how despite his critical professions of commitment to "reality," there is an aspect of James that revels in the fictiveness of fiction, the game-playing nature of it--something replicated by people like Nabokov and Pynchon. That is not to say James avoids reality. Far from it. His emotional sensitivity is acute, one could even say too tender. Sometimes his characters are caught in the throes of emotion and I'm unsure how they got there. But that is altogether part of his charm. He lacks for social consciousness, and limns only a carefully removed segment of society, but he enchants the world he depicts, leaving one with a sense of lightness and delicacy in spite of the winding emotional roads James' takes you on.

The essays here are also great. James utter commitment to the world of literary fiction shines through, as does his typical insight into American society and its relation to European culture. Some of his criticism of Hawthorne and Whitman reveal much more about his own parochial view on America than theirs, but the comments on the nature of fiction, Balzac, Shakespeare, and Emerson are all penetrating. I always want to use the word "charming" to describe his work. He leaves you feeling charmed. It's not the full spectrum of what one could ask for from literature, but it is exquisite at doing what it aims to do.

[Imlac]

An International Episode *** 5 July 26
Novella about a transatlantic romance. Young and handsome Lord Lambeth visits America with his older kinsman Percy Beaumont. After a brief stay in New York City they are hosted by Mrs Westgate and her young sister, pretty and lively Bessie Alden, in Newport. Lambeth and Miss Alden form a pair, constantly in each other's company. Beaumont warns Lambeth's mother in London of the growing attachment, and she sends for him back on a pretext. After the Englishmen return, the American women visit London on the way to the Continent. Lambeth and Bessie reestablish their former intimacy. Bessie, who is "clever" and fascinated by English history and culture, expects Lambeth to be cleverer and more serious than he either is or wants to be; Lambeth finds himself increasingly attracted to Bessie. Things reach a crisis when Lambeth invites her to his family's castle, Branches, where she is to meet his mother, the Duchess of Bayswater, and his sister the Countess of Pimlico. These aristocratic women pay the Americans a preliminary visit, during which the Duchess makes clear her disapproval of a union between her son and the young American. Lambeth the next day visits Bessie and proposes marriage. She turns him down, and the sisters leave London for Paris. Though Beaumont believes the Duchess has succeeded in disentangling her son from a fortune-hunting American, and Mrs Westgate is mortified that this is the impression they leave with, Bessie herself has no regrets.

[Brad Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

A talented and capable writer whose work has tragically been somewhat hindered by the era it was written in. The ideas are all there but lack the sort of nuance and thinking that began to emerge in the 20th century.

[Michael Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read "The Aspern Papers" and "The Beast in the Jungle."

[Gideonleek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bro is a W writer

[Hamish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a little on the fence about my score for this one. A Turn of the Screw is great, but the others were a little hit or miss for me. This could easily be a 3, but I'll round up to a 4.