Contemporary American Literature Part 37

On one thing I was determined; that, though I should clearly have to pile brick upon brick for the creation of an interest, I would leave no pretext for saying that anything is out of line, scale or perspective. I would build large--in fine embossed vaults and painted arches, as who should say, and yet never let it appear that the chequered pavement, the ground under the reader's feet, fails to stretch at every point to the base of the walls....

The bricks, for the whole counting-over--putting for bricks little touches and inventions and enhancements by the way--affect me in truth as well-nigh innumerable and as ever so scrupulously fitted together and packed-in. It is an effect of detail, of the minutest; though, if one were in this connexion to say all, one would express the hope that the general, the ampler part of the modest monument still survives....

So early was to begin my tendency to _overtreat_, rather than undertreat (when there was choice or danger) my subject. (Many members of my craft, I gather, are far from agreeing with me, but I have always held overtreating the minor disservice.) ... There was the danger of the noted "thinness"--which was to be averted, tooth and nail, by cultivation of the lively.... And then there was another matter. I had, within the few preceding years, come to live in London, and the "international" light lay, in those days, to my sense, thick and rich upon the scene. It was the light in which so much of the picture hung. But that _is_ another matter. There is really too much to say.

3. Remember the following clues in reading James's, work: "His one preoccupation was the criticism, for his own purpose, of the art of life." The emphasis is on the word _art_. His _purpose_ is suggested by his own claim to have "that tender appreciation of actuality which makes even the application of a single coat of rose-color seem an act of violence."

4. There is suggestion of Mr. James's limitations in the facts that he was tone deaf and so could not appreciate music, and that he is said not to have written a line of verse, and also in the fact that although his method of presentation in the novels is dramatic throughout and he strongly desired to write plays, the eight plays that he wrote (three of which were presented) were failures.

5. Mr. James's place in the sequence of great European novelists is as a follower of Balzac, Flaubert, De Maupa.s.sant, and Turgenev, and as a predecessor of Conrad (whose study of him listed below should be read).

6. Early in the nineties, a great change in method came about in James's work (cf. _Cambridge_, III, 98, 103). Judge separately typical books written before this change and others written after; then read several books of the period of change and decide what happened and whether or not it enhanced the value of his work.

7. One of the remarkable facts about James's style is its influence upon the critics who write about him. A close a.n.a.lysis of its qualities--sentence length, the order and placing of the parts of the sentence, punctuation, vocabulary, etc., might bring a more definite understanding of the reasons for this influence.

8. A comparison of the work and qualities of Henry and William James might be made a valuable contribution to criticism.

9. For a student familiar with Europe, a study of the reasons for James's affinity with Europe and dislike for American life would make an interesting study.

10. What different types of reasons can you bring to show that Henry James is likely to be a permanent force in American literature?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. 1875.

Transatlantic Sketches. 1875.

Roderick Hudson. 1876.

*The American. 1877.

Watch and Ward. 1878.

French Poets and Novelists. 1878.

The Europeans. A Sketch. 1878.

*Daisy Miller. A Study. 1879.

An International Episode. 1879.

Daisy Miller: A Study. An International Episode. Four Meetings. 1879.

The Madonna of the Future and Other Tales. 1879.

Hawthorne. 1879. (English Men of Letters.) The Diary of a Man of Fifty and A Bundle of Letters. 1880.

Confidence. 1880.

Was.h.i.+ngton Square. 1881.

Was.h.i.+ngton Square. The Pension Beaurepas. A Bundle of Letters. 1881.

*The Portrait of a Lady. 1881.

Daisy Miller: A Comedy. 1882. (Privately printed.) The Siege of London, The Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View. 1883.

Portraits of Places. 1883.

Tales of Three Cities. 1884.

A Little Tour in France. 1885.

Stories Revived. 1885. (3 vols. of Short Stories.) The Bostonians. 1886.

The Princess Casama.s.sima. 1886.

The Reverberator. 1888.

The Aspern Papers. Louisa Pallant. The Modern Warning. 1888.

Partial Portraits. 1888.

A London Life. The Patagonia. The Liar. Mrs. Temperley. 1889.

The Tragic Muse. 1892.

The Lesson of the Master. The Marriages. The Pupil. Brooksmith. The Solution. Sir Edward Orme. 1892.

The Real Thing and Other Tales. 1893.

The Private Life. Lord Beaupre. The Visits. 1893.

The Wheel of Time. Collaboration. Owen Wingrave. 1893.

Picture and Text. 1893.

Essays in London and Elsewhere. 1893.

Theatricals. Two Comedies: Tenants. Disengaged. 1894.

Theatricals. Second Series. The Alb.u.m. The Reprobate. 1895.

*Terminations. The Death of the Lion. The c.o.xon Fund. The Middle Years.

The Altar of the Dead. 1895.

Embarra.s.sments. The Figure in the Carpet. Gla.s.ses. The Next Time. The Way It Came. 1896.

The Other House. 1896.

*The Spoils of Poynton. 1897.

*What Maisie Knew. 1897.

In the Cage. 1898.

The Two Magics. The Turn of the Screw. Covering End. 1898.

The Awkward Age. 1899.

The Soft Side. 1900.

The Sacred Fount. 1901.

*The Wings of the Dove. 1902.

The Better Sort. 1903. (Short stories.) *The Amba.s.sadors. 1903.

William Wetmore Story and His Friends. 1903.

*The Golden Bowl. 1904.

English Hours. 1905.

The Question of Our Speech. The Lesson of Balzac: Two Lectures. 1905.

The American Scene. 1907.

Views and Reviews, Now First Collected. 1908.

Italian Hours. 1909.

*The Altar of the Dead. The Beast in the Jungle. The Birthplace, and Other Tales. 1909.

The Finer Grain. 1910. (Short stories.) The Outcry. 1911.

A Small Boy and Others. 1913. (Autobiography.) Notes of a Son and Brother. 1914. (Autobiography.) Notes on Novelists. With Some Other Notes. 1914.

The Ivory Tower. 1917.

The Sense of the Past. 1917.

The Middle Years. 1917. (Autobiography.) Gabrielle de Bergerac. 1918. (_Atlantic_, 1860.) Travelling Companions. 1919. (7 stories originally published 1868-74.) A Landscape Painter. 1919. (4 stories originally published 1866-68.) Master Eustace. 1920. (5 stories originally published 1869-78.) The Letters of Henry James. 1920. (Selected and edited by Percy Lubbock.)

For further bibliographical references, see _Cambridge_, III (IV), 671.

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Beach, J.W. The Method of Henry James. 1918.

Brownell.

Cambridge.

Cary, Elizabeth Luther. The Novels of Henry James. 1905.

Elton, Oliver. Modern Studies. 1907.

Follett.

Freeman, John. The Moderns. 1917.