Parisian Sketches: Letters to the New York Tribune 1875-1876

by Henry James

Excerpt from Parisian Letters to the New York Tribune 1875-1876

Henry J ames's Paris letters to the New York Trib une of almost eighty years ago have been collected in this volume for the first time. Three of the letters were reprinted by James during his lifetime, the remainder were allowed to linger in the crumbling newspaper files in the hope that they would be forgotten. In recent years extracts from those letters that were devoted to the theater were included in Allan Wade's collection of J ames's dramatic criticism, The Scenic Art; and cer tain passages dealing with paintings were incorporated by John L. Sweeney in his compilation of Henry J ames's art criticisms, The Painter's Eye. The ma J or ity of the letters, however, remained uncollected, and available only to those who cared to read the files or the microfilm record.

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302 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1875

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."