One of the greatest of Henry James’s prolific output of novels, The Golden Bowl focuses on the relationship between a widower, Adam Verver, and his daughter, Maggie. The Ververs are wealthy Americans, freed for a life of cultivated leisure by… Read More ›
One of Henry James’s shorter novels, Washington Square ran first as a serial in The Cornhill Magazine in 1880. James considers his trademark displaced protagonist in the form of Catherine Sloper, daughter of a wealthy New York physician. While the… Read More ›
One of Henry James’s shortest novels, The Turn of the Screw first appeared in Collier’s Weekly. When published in a volume titled The Two Magics, it appeared with another story titled Covering End. Although brief, it captured readers’ imagination and… Read More ›
Roderick Hudson was Henry James’s first extensive novel, appearing as installments in 1875 in The Atlantic Monthly. James chose as protagonist an amateur American sculptor, placing him in Europe with a wealthy patron named Rowland Mallet. Critics agreed that this… Read More ›
Henry James first published The Princess Casamassima as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly between September 1885 and October 1886. He reintroduces the princess as a character from a previous novel, Roderick Hudson (1875), in which the sculptor Hudson dies in… Read More ›
Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady appeared first as installments in The Atlantic Monthly (1880–81), where readers recognized in its protagonist, Isabel Archer, a more mature version of the title character from his earlier novella, Daisy Miller (1879). Like… Read More ›
In what critics label Joseph Conrad’s first accomplished work, he produces a text at once revered and criticized. Conrad asked W. E. Henley, poet and editor of The New Review, to publish the novel in his magazine. Conrad hoped that… Read More ›
In 1860, founder and publisher George Smith hired William Makepeace Thackeray as the first editor to write and critique material for The Cornhill Magazine. Eight other men worked as editors until the last issue appeared in 1900. Thackeray devoted issues… Read More ›
Henry James published The American first as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly between June 1876 and May 1877, then as a volume in 1877. Born an American, James made his first extended visit to Europe at age 26, returned… Read More ›
Biographical narratives typically have been constructed according to a standard format, a chronicle from cradle to grave. In contrast, autobiographical narratives have been less formulaic or more experimental, taking multiple forms. The earliest biographies were intended to glorify the lives… Read More ›
“Sir Edmund Orme” is one of Henry James’s many tales that revolve around strange apparitions. A fascination with occult (magical, theosophical, mysterious, or even spiritual) phenomena is evident in many of James’s tales and short stories. Like his contemporaries George… Read More ›
Originally subtitled “A Study,” this novella was first published by Leslie Stephen, the father of Virginia Woolf, in the Cornhill Magazine. The choice of a British press cost Henry James his American rights. The sheer amount of pirated versions, however,… Read More ›
“The Turn of the Screw” was first published as a serial in Collier’s Weekly in 1898 and appeared later the same year in book form, in The Two Magics. Quickly becoming Henry James’s most popular piece of short fiction, The… Read More ›
One of Henry James’s most anthologized stories, The Real Thing was first published on April 16, 1892, in Black and White and later reprinted in the New York edition of James’s works (1909), a comprehensive, multivolume collection of James’s works…. Read More ›
First published in the English Review, this story, frequently interpreted in conjunction with “The Beast in the Jungle” and The Turn of the Screw, begins in medias res. Spencer Brydon, age 56, who has just returned to New York from… Read More ›
Written in 1892, Henry James‘s short story “Greville Fane” depicts the troubled and tumultuous relationship between a popular novelist, Greville Fane, and her two ungrateful children, Lady Ethel Luard and Leolin. The short story begins with the narrator’s receiving news… Read More ›
“Europe,” originally published in the story collection The Soft Side, is a useful encapsulation in short story form of the symbolic use of Europe that Henry James had employed so successfully in the novella Daisy Miller and later in a… Read More ›
Henry James (15 April 1843 –28 February 1916) believed that an author must be granted his donnée, or central idea, and then be judged on the execution of his material. James’s stories are about members of high society. The characters… Read More ›
From the ancient belief in humors to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ psychoanalytic and pharmacological methodologies, diverse theories about the mind have affected the literary production of novelists. Categorization according to these theories is difficult, because authors tend to mix… Read More ›
The gothic novel is a living tradition, a form that enjoys great popular appeal while provoking harsh critical judgments. It began with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1765), then traveled through Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Charles Robert Maturin,… Read More ›
You must be logged in to post a comment.