The Prefaces Of Henry James

This collection of prefaces, originally written for the 1909 multi-volume New York Edition of Henry James’s fiction, first appeared in book form in 1934 with an introduction by poet and critic R. P. Blackmur. In his prefaces, James tackles the great problems of fiction writing—character, plot, point of view, inspiration—and explains how he came to write novels such as The Portrait of a Lady and The American. As Blackmur puts it, “criticism has never been more ambitious, nor more useful.” The latest edition of this influential work includes a foreword by bestselling author Colm Tóibín, whose critically acclaimed novel The Master is told from the point of view of Henry James. As a guide not only to James’s inspiration and execution, but also to his frustrations and triumphs, this volume will be valuable both to students of James’s fiction and to aspiring writers.

After her parents� bitter divorce, young Maisie Farange finds herself shuttled between her selfish mother and vain father, who value her only as a means for provoking each other. Maisie � solitary, observant and wise beyond her years � is drawn into an increasingly entangled adult world of intrigue and sexual betrayal, until she is finally compelled to choose her own future. What Maisie Knew is a subtle yet devastating portrayal of an innocent adrift in a corrupt society. Part of a relaunch of three James titles.

Henry James rebelled intuitively against the tyranny and banality of plots. Believing a life to have many potential paths and a self to hold many destinies, he hung the evocative shadow of "what might have been" over much of what he wrote. Yet James also realized that no life can be lived--and no story written--except by submission to some outcome. The limiting conventions of society and literature are, he found, almost inescapable. In a major, comprehensive new study of James's work, Millicent Bell explores this oscillation between hope and fatalism, indeterminacy and form, and uncertainty and meaning. In the process Bell provides fresh insight into how we read and interpret fiction. Bell demonstrates how James's texts steadfastly, almost perversely at times, preserve a sense of alternative possibilities. James involves his characters in overlapping scenarios drawn from folklore, drama, literature, or naturalist formula. The reader engages, with the hero or heroine, in imagining many plots other than the one that finally-and often ambiguously--emerges. The story arouses expectations, proposes courses, then cancels them successively. In complicity with author and character, the reader crafts the story in an adventure of constant revision and anticipation. Literary meaning becomes an experience as well as a goal. In the end, revelations and resolutions, even if unclear or partial, assume an altered significance in light of the earlier imaginings. Not surprisingly, James's deepest sympathies lay with those characters who resisted entrapment by cultural expectations--his idealistic free spirits like Isabel, his marriage renouncers like Fleda Vetch, his largely silent and detached witnesses to life like Strether and the generous Maisie. They are frequently the victims of callous manipulators who box them into oppressive roles or who literally "plot against" them. By looking closely at James's critiques of clever" categorical mind and at his loving and complex portraits of characters of unfulfilled potentiality, Bell celebrates the paradoxes of James's story-denying fiction. In extended analyses of Daisy Miller," Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady; The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, "The Aspern Papers," The Spoils of Poynton, "The Turn of the Screw," What Maisie Knew, "The Beast in the Jungle," "The Jolly Corner," The Wings of the Dove, and The Ambassadors, Bell relates James's work to influential movements of the day, notably impressionism and naturalism. She examines the influence of Hawthorne, Emerson, Flaubert, Balzac, and Zola on James at various periods throughout his career. Drawing on rich traditions of criticism and on stimulating recent theories, Bell forges a critical approach both accessible and profound for this elegant reading of one of the greatest writers of this or any time. It is a book that will be of high value and interest to the advanced scholar--marking out new ground in its methodology and offering innovative interpretations of James's fiction. At the same time, it will appeal equally to the general, reader, who will find his reading of James enriched by Bell's lucid and impassioned discussion.

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James provides a critical introduction to James's work. Throughout the major critical shifts of the last fifty years, and despite suspicions of the traditional high literary culture which was James's milieu, he has retained a powerful hold on readers and critics alike. All essays are written at a level free from technical jargon, designed to promote accessibility to the study of James and his work.

This is the first scholarly edition of an important group of critical writings by Henry James, the Prefaces to his New York Edition (1907–9). It will be of value to James scholars and to scholars and advanced students of 19th- and 20th-century British and American literature and book history.

"A bibliographical note: Blackmur's essays on Henry James": p. 243-244. Includes index.

Comprised of more than 250 selections from Henry James's stories about writers, his critical and speculative essays, his Notebooks, Prefaces, and letters, this collection brings together for the first time, in a single, systematic volume, all the important passages in James's work which have implications for or ideas about his theory of fiction. The result is the most comprehensive, exhaustive, and innovative volume of fictional theory ever published; in many ways it is the consummation of James's contribution to letters. In a masterful introductory essay, James E. Miller Jr., presents James's theory of fiction in outline; he also contributes brief introductions to each of the seventeen chapters, summarizing the major points. Abundant guides direct the reader to subjects and sources.

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