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This collection of 216 letters offers an accessible, single-volume distillation of the exchange between celebrated brothers William and Henry James. Spanning more than fifty years, their correspondence presents a lively account of the persons, places, and events that affected the Euro-American world from 1861 until the death of William James in August 1910. An engaging introduction by John J. McDermott suggests the significance of the Selected Letters for the study of the entire family.
The romantic side of Henry James, revealed through his letters to young male friends
Henry James (1843-1916) was an important commentator on the cultural life of 19th century Boston, Paris and London. This collection of fifty six of his critical essays and reviews includes critiques of exhibitions and collections of the works of such artists as Rousseau, Delacroix, Turner and Sargent. The essays, some of which have never produced or have been unavailable for some time, are arranged chronologically. They chart the development of James's own aesthetic attitudes but, more significantly, reveal much about the evaluative criteria that formed the basis for 19th century criticism in general. As a result they form a body of work for art historians concerned with this period's appraisal of its own artistic trends and those of previous generations.
Readers generally know only one of the two famous James brothers. Literary types know Henry James; psychologists, philosophers, and religion scholars know William James. In reality, the brothers’ minds were inseparable, as the more than eight hundred letters they wrote to each other reveal. In this book, J. C. Hallman mines the letters for mutual affection and influence, painting a moving portrait of a relationship between two extraordinary men. Deeply intimate, sometimes antagonistic, rife with wit, and on the cutting edge of art and science, the letters portray the brothers’ relationship and measure the manner in which their dialogue helped shape, through the influence of their literary and intellectual output, the philosophy, science, and literature of the century that followed. William and Henry James served as each other’s muse and critic. For instance, the event of the death of Mrs. Sands illustrates what H’ry never stated: even if the “matter” of his fiction was light, the minds behind it lived and died as though it was very heavy indeed. He seemed to best understand this himself only after Wm fully fleshed out his system. “I can’t now explain save by the very fact of the spell itself . . . that [Pragmatism] cast upon me,” H’ry wrote in 1907. “All my life I have . . . unconsciously pragmatised.” Wm was never able to be quite so gracious in return. In 1868, he lashed out at the “every day” elements of two of H’ry’s early stories, and then explained: “I have uttered this long rigmarole in a dogmatic manner, as one speaks, to himself, but of course you will use it merely as a mass to react against in your own way, so that it may serve you some good purpose.” He believed he was doing H’ry a service as he criticized a growing tendency toward “over-refinement” or “curliness” of style. “I think it ought to be of use to you,” he wrote in 1872, “to have any detailed criticism fm even a wrong judge, and you don’t get much fm. any one else.” For the most part, H’ry agreed. “I hope you will continue to give me, when you can, your free impression of my performance. It is a great thing to have some one write to one of one’s things as if one were a 3d person & you are the only individual who will do this.”
James's correspondents included presidents and prime ministers, painters and great ladies, actresses and bishops, and the writers Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells and Edith Wharton. This fully-annotated selection from James's eloquent correspondence allows the writer to reveal himself and the fascinating world in which he lived. The letters provide a rich and fascinating source for James' views on his own works, on the literary craft, on sex, politics and friendship. Together they constitute, in Philip Horne's own words, James' 'real and best biography'.
The Complete Letters of Henry James fills a crucial gap in modern literary studies by presenting in a scholarly edition the complete letters of one of the great novelists and letter writers of the English language. Comprising more than ten thousand letters reflecting on a remarkably wide range of topics—from James's own life and literary projects to broader questions about art, literature, and criticism—this edition is an indispensable resource for students of James and of American and English literature, culture, and criticism as well as for research libraries throughout North America and Europe and for scholars of James, the European novel, and modern literature. Pierre A. Walker and Greg W. Zacharias have conceived this edition according to the exacting standards of the Committee on Scholarly Editions. This volume is the second of three to include James's letters from 1872 to 1876.
The two men met on only six occasions, and never for more than a few days, so their friendship was almost entirely epistolary. The letters assembled here, nearly half of which are previously unpublished, exhibit a voice decidedly more vulnerable than that which we usually associate with James. They also shed new light on the writer's homoerotic leanings, as he approaches Andersen with a passion, as well as a tenderness, typically reserved for a lover.
This volume, the conclusion of Leon Edel's splendid edition, rounds off a half century of work on James by the noted biographer-critic. In the letters of the novelist's last twenty years a new Henry James is revealed. Edel's generous selection shows us, as he says, a "looser, less formal, less distant" personality, a man writing with greater candor and with more emotional freedom, who "has at last opened himself up to the physical things of life." The decade embracing the turn of the century is the most productive period of James's career. Happily settled in an English country house and now dictating to a typist, he is able to write The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl in three years. The letters show clearly how his fiction turned from his world-famous tales of international society to the life of passion in his last novels. His new friends and correspondents include Conrad, H. G. Wells, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, and several young men to whom he writes curious, half-inhibited love letters. Mrs. Wharton, with her chauffered "chariot of fire," introduces him to the thrill of motoring and welcomes him into her cosmopolitan circle; to him she embodies the affluence and driving energy of the America of the Gilded Age. For the first time in over twenty years he revisits his homeland, traveling not only in the East but through the South to Florida and west to California. He is dismayed by the materialism he finds and the changed ways of life. Back in England, he plunges into several projects; for the New York edition of his works he revises the early novels and writes his famous prefaces. His relations with agents and publishers as well as family and friends are fully documented in the letters, as are his trips to the Continent and visits with Edith Wharton in Paris. His last years are darkened by a long siege of nervous ill health and by the death of his beloved brother William. But he carries on, moves back to London, and continues to work. Among the most eloquent of all his letters are those describing his anguished reaction to the Great War. To show his allegiance to the Allied cause, he becomes a British citizen, six months before his death. The volume concludes with his "final and fading words" dictated on his deathbed.