Henry James
21) The Birthplace
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In this lesser known classic James explores in miniature the themes of his major fiction, enlivened by a characteristically keen eye for character and a wry appreciation of both pretension and the absurd Blackport-on-Dwindle- "all granite, fog, and female fiction"- has been the Gedges' dull domain for some years. They leap, therefore, at the invitation to become the live-in guardians of the birthplace of their nation's literary hero. Anticipating...
22) The Sacred Fount
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The Sacred Fount is a novel by Henry James, first published in 1901. This strange, often baffling book concerns an unnamed narrator who attempts to discover the truth about the love lives of his fellow guests at a weekend party in the English countryside. He spurns the "detective and keyhole" methods as ignoble, and instead tries to decipher these relationships purely from the behavior and appearance of each guest. He expends huge resources of energy...
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Published in 1913, this autobiography by James tells of his childhood and adolescence in a wealthy and accomplished family. He zeros in on highs such as meeting Thackery and Dickens, or lows of feeling too ashamed to join other children dancing. James focuses his novelist's eye on the painfully shy but precociously gifted boy he once was, and the result is a self-portrait of rare honesty and critical judgment.
24) The Outcry
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This early work by Henry James was originally published in 1911 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Henry James was born in New York City in 1843. One of thirteen children, James had an unorthodox early education, switching between schools, private tutors and private reading.. James published his first story, 'A Tragedy of Error', in the Continental Monthly in 1864, when he was twenty years old. In 1876, he emigrated...
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The Wings of the Dove, by Henry James, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of...
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The Death of the Lion is an 1894 short story by Henry James. The narrator suggests writing an article on Neil Paraday; his new editor agrees. The former spends a week with Neil and writes the article whilst there, alongside reading Paraday's latest book. His editor rejects the article however; he decides to write an article for another newspaper, but it goes unnoticed. Neil Paraday gets excited about writing another book, despite the fact that he...
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A Bundle of Letters is a comic short story by Henry James, originally published in The Parisian magazine in 1879, which is also when the story takes place. The story is one of James' few ventures into epistolary fiction. As he did so often, especially in the early stages of his career, James made the tale part of his international theme: his letter-writers represent a number of different countries. Although some of the characters look like well-worn...
29) The Coxon Fund
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"The Coxon Fund" is an 1894 short story by Henry James. Frank Saltram is a man who apparently has a towering intellect, but one that manifests itself only in sparkling table-talk. He has a real and powerful gift to delight with his conversation, particularly when intoxicated, but other than conversation he produces nothing. Saltram also recognizes no obligations or duties, is ungrateful and utterly unreliable, and is apparently prone to immoral acts....
30) The Chaperon
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What can a girl to do when London society has convicted her mother of a dreadful sin and has ostracized her? If blood is thicker than water, the daughter must remain loyal to her parent surely, how far will it affect her own standing in society (and most important, of course) in the marriage market that is controlled by that society?
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Partial Portraits examines the work of a range of authors, such as Emerson, Eliot, Trollope, and Stevenson. It includes one of James's most famous essays, The Art of Fiction, in which he argues that writers should not be limited in their subject matter, and that the only obligation a writer has is to make the work interesting.
32) Eugene Pickering
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Eugene Pickering by Henry James libreka classics — These are classics of literary history, reissued and made available to a wide audience.
Immerse yourself in well-known and popular titles!
33) Embarrassments
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Collection of classics by Henry James. Titles include: "The Figure in the Carpet", "Glasses", "The Next Time" and "The Way It Came".
35) The Private Life
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Excerpt: "We talked of London, face to face with a great bristling, primeval glacier. The hour and the scene were one of those impressions which make up a little, in Switzerland, for the modern indignity of travel-the promiscuities and vulgarities, the station and the hotel, the gregarious patience, the struggle for a scrappy attention, the reduction to a numbered state. The high valley was pink with the mountain rose, the cool air as fresh as if...
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James published this work of collected literary criticism in 1914, with the individual pieces drawn from the preceding two decades. James discusses Robert Louis Stevenson, Gustave Flaubert, George Sand, and others. It is on these essays, as well as the introductions to his own collected works, that James's reputation as one of the most acute literary critics of his era rests.
37) The Path of Duty
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This wickedly ironic story is shorter than most of James's tales. It concerns three English aristocrats and an unnamed female narrator who is herself a target of the irony. Ambrose Tester is in love with Lady Vandeleur, a married woman as the story opens. Conveniently for the plot, however, her husband soon dies and Ambrose has a decision to make. Should he marry the woman he loves or Jocelind, whom he does not love but has gotten himself engaged...
38) The Jolly Corner
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The Jolly Corner is a short story by Henry James published first in the magazine The English Review of December, 1908. One of James' most noted ghost stories, "The Jolly Corner" describes the adventures of Spencer Brydon as he prowls the now-empty New York house where he grew up. He encounters a "sensation more complex than had ever before found itself consistent with sanity."
39) The Finer Grain
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HE thought he had already, poor John Berridge, tasted in their fullness the sweets of success; but nothing yet had been more charming to him than when the young Lord, as he irresistibly and, for greater certitude, quite correctly figured him, fairly sought out, in Paris, the new literary star that had begun to hang, with a fresh red light, over the vast, even though rather confused, Anglo-Saxon horizon; positively approaching that celebrity with a...
40) The Middle Years
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The Middle Years is a short story by Henry James, first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1893. It may be the most affecting and profound of James's stories about writers. The novelist in the tale speculates that he has spent his whole life learning how to write, so a second life would make sense, "to apply the lesson." Second lives aren't usually available, so the novelist says of himself and his fellow artists: "We work in the dark-we do what...