Henry James

The retrospective theme of this year's scholarship is signaled by the title of the special issue of the Henry James Review, "Senses of the Past." Daniel Mark Fogel's "In Memoriam: Adeline R. Tintner (1912–2003)" (HJR 25: 1–3) pays tribute to a scholar "upon whom nothing was lost," while a forum on The Ambassadors in PMLA was inspired, poignantly, by the untimely death of Carolyn G. Heilbrun. A monograph by the late William Righter reminds readers of James's own reliance on memory and his fear that "the reflective life will be like flotsam on the surface of the world." But the novelist survives in the academy: another cluster of essays in HJR is devoted to teaching James, though critics who have recast him as a modernist will need to renew their attention to earlier, more accessible texts. Meanwhile, the novels of Colm Tóibín and David Lodge have revitalized James in our cultural imagination.

i Editions, Letters, Biographical Studies

The Portable Henry James, ed. John Auchard (Penguin), includes both the familiar tales and selections from the author's novels, letters, and nonfiction prose, along with the parodies and tributes of his successors. Designed for the travel case and the nightstand as well as the classroom, this collection abundantly illustrates the pleasures of Jamesian style. A new edition of The Ivory Tower (New York Review of Books) is introduced by Alan Hollingshurst, who discusses the connections of this "vibrant fragment" with Washington Square, The Golden Bowl, and The American Scene.

Beloved Boy: Letters to Hendrik C. Andersen, 1895–1915, ed. Rosella Mamoli Zorzi (Virginia), features 78 letters, 22 not previously published in Susan Gunter and Steven Jobe's Dearly Beloved Friends (see AmLS 2001, p. 122). An introduction by Millicent Bell and another preface by Mamoli Zorzi underscore not only James's homoerotic affection but his bemusement at the sculptor's "illiteracy" and grandiosity, especially when Andersen solicited funds for a World Centre of Communication ("Megalomania," responded James, "look it up in the dictionary"). The volume concludes with a contextualizing afterword by Elena di Majo, the curator of the Andersen Museum in Rome, which opened in 1999. George Monteiro's "Henry James on the Great War: A Letter Recovered from the Mercure de France" (ANQ 17: 53–54) reprints an excerpt from a letter sent by the author to Theodore Stanton, who often supplied the journal with items by Americans. Writing before the United States had joined the Allies, James expressed his hope for "a complete and mutual trust and faith" between the nations.

In "Henry James's Overexposures" (HJR 25: 254–66) Laura Saltz examines the author's responses to photographs of himself, especially Matthew Brady's daguerreotype of him and his father. Although James usually preferred the subjective truths of memory, these images forced him "to confront his ambivalence about his own body" and revealed the "limitations of his ability to figure himself, or anyone else, in his texts." But James's continued efforts to shape his image were inspired by popular interest in authors' homes, explains Alison Booth in "The Real Right Place of Henry James: Homes and Haunts" (HJR 25: 216–27). Although "The Birthplace" exposes Shakespeare's house as a simulacrum, The American Scene treats Washington Irving's Sunnyside nostalgically; and James's Lamb House has become "a fragmentary shrine."

ii Sources, Parallels, Influences, Adaptations, Fictionalizations

Tamara Follini's "James, Dickens, and the Indirections of Influence" (HJR 25: 228–38) notes the parallels between the two authors' descriptions of their initial encounters with London, which evoked "the vibrant unruliness of a world unshaped by narrative." These representations are intensified in The Wings of the Dove. A related study is "London Mysteries and International Conspiracies: James, Doyle, and the Aesthetics of Cosmopolitanism" by Tanya Agathocleous (NCC 26: 125–48). Comparing The Princess Casamassima with Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (1888), the critic notes that both writers were uneasy with a world made smaller; but whereas Doyle used romance to create "a readable network of universal stories," James destabilized the genre by dramatizing the spectator's absorption into...