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English Hours
A collection of James's travel essays on English towns and villages, first published in American periodicals in the late nineteenth century
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1905
8 people are currently reading
135 people want to read
About the author
Henry James
4,578 books3,952 followersHenry 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."
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."
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 4, 2025
Am gasit aceasta carte intr-un anticariat si era invelita intr-un staniol mov scorojit, astfel ca nimeni nu o baga in seama. Dupa ce am dat jos invelitoarea, am descoperit o coperta foarte stilata si acum are un loc de cinste in biblioteca mea. Nu ca n-ar fi avut si inainte...
"English hours" reprezinta un set de 16 schite pe care autorul le-a scris de-a lungul numeroaselor sale vizite in Regatul Unit. Prin ele autorul nu cauta sa flateze Anglia ci s-o admire cu sinceritate si duiosie, ca pe locul unde stramosii sai au crescut. Cartea nu e frumoasa doar pe dinafara ci si pe dinauntru pentru ca are mai multe ilustratii alb-negre care infatiseaza diferite cladiri si institutii impozante.
Parcurgerea cartii semana foarte mult cu plimbarea intr-o galerie de arta iar cel mai bun ghid pe care-l poti avea este chiar Henry James cu uimitorul sau talent de a descrie peisaje si de a povesti mici istorioare legate de fiecare loc sau cladire. Ca ambasador american in Europa, misiunea sa este de a apropia cele doua continente si doreste sa surprinda temperamentul, specificul si mai ales spiritul englez. Putem sa ne desfatam cu detalii sau informatii despre Westminster, zidurile romane din Chester, George Eliot, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning dar si despre Tamisa, raul Avon si nu in ultimul rand despre femeile frumoase in rochii de muselina. Cel mai amuzant mi s-a parut ca atunci cand Henry James a fost sa viziteze Stonehenge-ul, o serie de turisti foloseau anticii monoliti ca loc pentru baut bere, amintindu-mi de Romania zilelor noastre.
Ca incheiere, atasez aici cateva dintre frumoasele citate culese din carte:
"Presimteam, fara indoiala, cat de mult voi ajunge sa indragesc intr-o buna zi acest intunecat Babilon modern."
"E greu sa fii atat de iesit din comun, incat Londra sa nu-ti gaseasca egalul."
"... ti-ai putea inchipui ca globul colturos al pamantului e un fel de minge de carpa acoperita cu un invelis de plus asemenea pufului de pe piersici."
"... orasul apasa greu pe inima celui venit din afara. Pare infricosator si intunecat, fioros si nemilos" (despre Londra).
"Te trezesti in fata unui edificiu care arata atat de uman in frumusetea sa, incat pentru moment reconciliaza parca foarte bine arta si morala."
"English hours" reprezinta un set de 16 schite pe care autorul le-a scris de-a lungul numeroaselor sale vizite in Regatul Unit. Prin ele autorul nu cauta sa flateze Anglia ci s-o admire cu sinceritate si duiosie, ca pe locul unde stramosii sai au crescut. Cartea nu e frumoasa doar pe dinafara ci si pe dinauntru pentru ca are mai multe ilustratii alb-negre care infatiseaza diferite cladiri si institutii impozante.
Parcurgerea cartii semana foarte mult cu plimbarea intr-o galerie de arta iar cel mai bun ghid pe care-l poti avea este chiar Henry James cu uimitorul sau talent de a descrie peisaje si de a povesti mici istorioare legate de fiecare loc sau cladire. Ca ambasador american in Europa, misiunea sa este de a apropia cele doua continente si doreste sa surprinda temperamentul, specificul si mai ales spiritul englez. Putem sa ne desfatam cu detalii sau informatii despre Westminster, zidurile romane din Chester, George Eliot, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning dar si despre Tamisa, raul Avon si nu in ultimul rand despre femeile frumoase in rochii de muselina. Cel mai amuzant mi s-a parut ca atunci cand Henry James a fost sa viziteze Stonehenge-ul, o serie de turisti foloseau anticii monoliti ca loc pentru baut bere, amintindu-mi de Romania zilelor noastre.
Ca incheiere, atasez aici cateva dintre frumoasele citate culese din carte:
"Presimteam, fara indoiala, cat de mult voi ajunge sa indragesc intr-o buna zi acest intunecat Babilon modern."
"E greu sa fii atat de iesit din comun, incat Londra sa nu-ti gaseasca egalul."
"... ti-ai putea inchipui ca globul colturos al pamantului e un fel de minge de carpa acoperita cu un invelis de plus asemenea pufului de pe piersici."
"... orasul apasa greu pe inima celui venit din afara. Pare infricosator si intunecat, fioros si nemilos" (despre Londra).
"Te trezesti in fata unui edificiu care arata atat de uman in frumusetea sa, incat pentru moment reconciliaza parca foarte bine arta si morala."
September 21, 2023
I had not heard of this book until I came across a mention of it in Philip Marsden’s Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place, a book about England’s vanished past. It has a quote from English Hours about James’s visit to Dunwich in Suffolk, a once-thriving town that since the 1200s has been progressively swallowed by the sea. I thought the quote was evocative and well written, so I made a note to look up the book.
English Hours is a collection of essays, mostly from the 1870s, when James was in this 30s and before he had become a famous author (Daisy Miller appeared in 1879 and Washington Square in 1880). The essays are mostly about places or events; the places are in southern and eastern England, and the events things like Christmas, the Derby, and summertime in the countryside. He traveled by train where available, and by coach or river steamer otherwise. His reputation rests on his psychological insights and literary style, and sometimes his writing hits the mark perfectly, conjuring up scenes from a century and half past:
At other times he goes on and on about something so obliquely that I would lose the thread of the narrative: after a page and a half of impressions and allusions I could find myself looking up and asking what the hell is he talking about, and would need to flip back to see that it was a park, a view of the river, or a paean to the doughty Englishness of the innumerable poor.
The poor are a constant presence in the city, and James’s attempt to give them dignity only partially offsets the squalor of their condition, as in “everywhere you go you are accompanied by a vague consciousness of the British child hovering about your knees and coat-skirts, naked, grimy, and portentous.” He mentions that when people dine outside at restaurants they are surrounded by a half-circle of poor people watching them eat, “admiring them” James says, but there might have been more to it than that. He takes a coach to the Darby races, and he and his companions have their lunch on top of it while the poor mill around below, watching them eat and hoping to be tossed a morsel.
He was writing at a time when access to clean drinking water was becoming more common in the big cities, but for many people gin and beer were still easier to get and safer than some of the water sources, and James recognized its effects on the people: “Then it is not too much to say that two thirds of the London faces, as the streets present them, bear in some degree or other the traces of alcoholic action. The proportion of flushed, empurpled, eruptive masks is considerable; a source of depression, for the spectator, not diminished by the fact that many of the faces thus disfigured have evidently been planned on lines of high superficial decency.”
It was a time when public transportation was becoming cheaper, with penny-steamers on the rivers and affordable train fares. It allowed ordinary people to get out of the city for the first time, and James was not always enthusiastic about sharing his beloved parks and gardens with them. “I had learned that, with regard to most romantic sites in England, there is a constant cockneyfication with which you must make your account. There are always people on the field before you, and there is generally something being drunk on the premises.”
Another thing he notes is the privatization of practically everything. If you wanted to walk a wooded path, or stroll along a pier, there was always an iron gate and an attendant charging admission.
I picked up the book primarily because I wanted to read James’s descriptions of the places he visited outside of London, the small towns where people lived much as they had for centuries past. However, most of his time in these places is spent describing churches and manor houses, and only occasionally do you read about things like crumbling ivy-covered walls that once defied French pirates or Puritan Roundheads.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book, and in it you can see James developing the literary style that would mark him in his future works. In English Hours this style is still a work in progress, and sometimes he gets carried away by his own words, but there are moments of brilliance. Anyone interested in life in England in the 1870s, just as the modern age was being born, would enjoy some of his observations and insights.
English Hours is a collection of essays, mostly from the 1870s, when James was in this 30s and before he had become a famous author (Daisy Miller appeared in 1879 and Washington Square in 1880). The essays are mostly about places or events; the places are in southern and eastern England, and the events things like Christmas, the Derby, and summertime in the countryside. He traveled by train where available, and by coach or river steamer otherwise. His reputation rests on his psychological insights and literary style, and sometimes his writing hits the mark perfectly, conjuring up scenes from a century and half past:
We are far from liking London well enough till we like its defects: the dense darkness of much of its winter, the soot on the chimney-pots and everywhere else, the early lamplight, the brown blue of the houses, the splashing hansoms in Oxford Street or the Strand on December afternoons. There is still something that recalls to me the enchantment of children – the anticipation of Christmas – the delight of a holiday walk – in the way the shop-fronts shine into the fog. It makes each of them seem a little world of light and warmth.
At other times he goes on and on about something so obliquely that I would lose the thread of the narrative: after a page and a half of impressions and allusions I could find myself looking up and asking what the hell is he talking about, and would need to flip back to see that it was a park, a view of the river, or a paean to the doughty Englishness of the innumerable poor.
The poor are a constant presence in the city, and James’s attempt to give them dignity only partially offsets the squalor of their condition, as in “everywhere you go you are accompanied by a vague consciousness of the British child hovering about your knees and coat-skirts, naked, grimy, and portentous.” He mentions that when people dine outside at restaurants they are surrounded by a half-circle of poor people watching them eat, “admiring them” James says, but there might have been more to it than that. He takes a coach to the Darby races, and he and his companions have their lunch on top of it while the poor mill around below, watching them eat and hoping to be tossed a morsel.
He was writing at a time when access to clean drinking water was becoming more common in the big cities, but for many people gin and beer were still easier to get and safer than some of the water sources, and James recognized its effects on the people: “Then it is not too much to say that two thirds of the London faces, as the streets present them, bear in some degree or other the traces of alcoholic action. The proportion of flushed, empurpled, eruptive masks is considerable; a source of depression, for the spectator, not diminished by the fact that many of the faces thus disfigured have evidently been planned on lines of high superficial decency.”
It was a time when public transportation was becoming cheaper, with penny-steamers on the rivers and affordable train fares. It allowed ordinary people to get out of the city for the first time, and James was not always enthusiastic about sharing his beloved parks and gardens with them. “I had learned that, with regard to most romantic sites in England, there is a constant cockneyfication with which you must make your account. There are always people on the field before you, and there is generally something being drunk on the premises.”
Another thing he notes is the privatization of practically everything. If you wanted to walk a wooded path, or stroll along a pier, there was always an iron gate and an attendant charging admission.
I picked up the book primarily because I wanted to read James’s descriptions of the places he visited outside of London, the small towns where people lived much as they had for centuries past. However, most of his time in these places is spent describing churches and manor houses, and only occasionally do you read about things like crumbling ivy-covered walls that once defied French pirates or Puritan Roundheads.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book, and in it you can see James developing the literary style that would mark him in his future works. In English Hours this style is still a work in progress, and sometimes he gets carried away by his own words, but there are moments of brilliance. Anyone interested in life in England in the 1870s, just as the modern age was being born, would enjoy some of his observations and insights.
May 18, 2011
I had been wanting to read this book for a long time. It is, perhaps, only for the die-hard James fan, or an Anglophile, or both. These are travel pieces originally written for magazines, and they are typically Jamesean: dense, obtuse, suave. Interesting, and fun, in their peculiar way.
"Before me and beside me sat a row of the comeliest young men, clad in black gowns and wearing on their shoulders long hoods trimmed in white fur. Who and what they were I know not, for I preferred not to learn, lest by chance they should not be so mediaeval as they looked."
"One need not be a rabid Anglican to be extremely sensible to the charm of an English country church..."
"Before me and beside me sat a row of the comeliest young men, clad in black gowns and wearing on their shoulders long hoods trimmed in white fur. Who and what they were I know not, for I preferred not to learn, lest by chance they should not be so mediaeval as they looked."
"One need not be a rabid Anglican to be extremely sensible to the charm of an English country church..."
October 3, 2020
A grower. I began this book confused and lost, trying to traverse my way along James’s labyrinthine sentences. Yet, after a few chapters, and acceptance of a slow read, I saw the real beauty and wit within his language. James seems to be able to see the world differently, and remark about it too like nobody else. It’s almost a privilege to see how he saw England.
January 13, 2019
This 1905 collection of travel pieces (most originating between 1869-1880) is kind of an odd artifact. There are two essays that don't really fit, one on Robert Browning's burial and one on the English setting of Thackeray's unfinished novel _Denis Duval_. These aren't, strictly speaking, travel narratives but rather literary criticism. Of the other pieces, most highlight James's idiosyncratic enthusiasms. He spends a lot of time contemplating the shadows of cathedral towers as they shift along the surrounding landscape during the day, watching people (particularly the lower classes), and enthusing about both the thrill of urban life and the joys of the countryside. Much like his "New York" editions of his works, these pieces have been altered (sometimes significantly) from their original publications, though unlike some of the "New York" versions of his fiction these essays are eminently readable. One of the things i found most interesting (because it meshes nicely with my scholarship) was his visit to Greenwich where he reflects on how much one can infer about the British Empire by visiting and observing portions of its bureaucratic machinery (places, facilities, and people). As a person living at the height of that Empire, James of course does not question its existence or ponder its necessity (he takes it for granted, in other words) but his observations are an interesting little insight into imperial existence, on a small scale, in the metropole (conveniently absent the human misery it caused around the world, of course).
December 26, 2025
• Henry James's move to England in 1876 influenced his literary style, notably in "What Maisie Knew" and "The Wings of the Dove."
• His initial admiration for Liverpool evolved into a deeper exploration of London's complex character, portrayed through locations such as Greenwich and Hampstead.
• James highlights the conflict between modernity and tradition, using landmarks like Westminster Abbey and contrasting Chester's historic architecture with urban settings.
• He critiques modern tourism and examines English social norms, especially on Sundays, enriching his narrative.
• Significant events like Derby Day and places such as Oxford exemplify the tension between chaos and peace.
• Historical sites like Canterbury Cathedral illustrate the intertwining of beauty and social commentary in England's narrative.
• Romantic towns like Winchelsea and Rye inspire reflections on creative decline, while personal connections to Dunwich emphasize the harmony of history and nature in rural England.
• His initial admiration for Liverpool evolved into a deeper exploration of London's complex character, portrayed through locations such as Greenwich and Hampstead.
• James highlights the conflict between modernity and tradition, using landmarks like Westminster Abbey and contrasting Chester's historic architecture with urban settings.
• He critiques modern tourism and examines English social norms, especially on Sundays, enriching his narrative.
• Significant events like Derby Day and places such as Oxford exemplify the tension between chaos and peace.
• Historical sites like Canterbury Cathedral illustrate the intertwining of beauty and social commentary in England's narrative.
• Romantic towns like Winchelsea and Rye inspire reflections on creative decline, while personal connections to Dunwich emphasize the harmony of history and nature in rural England.
March 15, 2019
Ach já hloupá, já myslela, že to je úplně něco jiného. Mno ono to nejspíše je úchvatné dílo pro nějakého anglofila. Hm. No jde o cestopisnou sbírku z roku 1850, která nadšence seznamuje s Anglií, vycházelo to v časopisech a tohle je knižní vydání. Jde o převratnou věc, protože cestopisy a články podporující cestování nebyly. Jdeo průkopníka ve svém oboru. Jo to jo, ale přece jen je rok 2019 a i když si to cením žánrově a po umělecké stránce, tak jinak už to je prostě out no. Aspoň pro mě.
October 3, 2025
This book was everything I'd hoped it would be. There are so many beautiful descriptions of the places he visited interwoven with his cheeky humor. You also get a sense of his own nostalgia and respect for the past. It made a cozy fall read.
July 10, 2017
Having recently traveled to England for the first time, it was interesting to read Henry James' impressions of some of the places I'd visited.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews