From the Editor

SUBSCRIBER ALERT ATTENTION, SUBSCRIBERS TO VOLUME Il of the HENRY JAMES REVIEW: you are being sent this first issue of Volume 11 I of the HJR in the hope that it will encourage you to renew your membership/subscription; should you decide to do so within the next twelve months, your subscription will begin with the issue you are now reading. From the Editor: Despite the delayed launching of Volume I I I of the Henry James Review (a delay that I will explain shortly), 1981-82 looks to be an exceptionally good year for the review and for the Henry James Society. The third annual meeting of the James Society this past December in New York City was a grand success: between two and three hundred people turned out to hear brilliantly entertaining papers by Richard Howard and Cynthia Ozick and David Ka I stone1 s response to them. (The speakers at the first two annual meetings were certainly no less Impressive, but since we had not yet wormed our way Into the MLA convention program—as we did this time around as a special session—only a few dozen people were present to hear them). In a review of the HJR forthcoming In the Wilson Library Bulletin, Eileen Margerum (of Northeastern University) writes that the "variety and range of articles will please any admirer of James's writings, but the potential audience for the magazine should extend beyond this group. Scholarship at its best Is first-rate work which can be accessible to anyone with basic information on the subject, not merely narrow and arcane research for the initiated. While there is material here for the James specialist, there are also many articles of Interest to the general reader." Margerum goes on to praise the series of Centennial Essays for providing "a rich mine of Information" and the HJR book reviews and Its annual analytic review of James studies for "high critical standards." And she goes rhetorically one up on the recommendation we received last fall from Library Journal (LJ's "recommended for all libraries" has already led to a considerable Increase in our institutional subscriptions) In concluding that the HJR "deserves a place in libraries at colleges and universities that take seriously their programs in English and American literature (that Is, any college worth the name)." Perhaps most excitingly, we have just arranged for a publication that will be a truly epoch-making event in James studies and, I think, a major event In American studies generally: in Volume IV of the HJR, we will devote an entire issue to "The Library of Henry James"—a list of all books known to have been in James's library, annotated and with a long introductory essay by Leon Edel and Adeline Tintner. As for Volume III, we are pleased to present, in this first issue, important new studies of The Aspern Papers and "The Story in It," a fascinating "Henry James Artsography," three articles on James's major phase and modernism, reviews of five new books on HJ, and Dennis O'Connor's brief James parody, "The Ball." In the second and third issues of the volume, we will publish a new Centennial Essay on The Europeans and a variety of essays by, among others, Leon Edel, Adeline Tintner, J. A. Ward, David Craig, Martha Banta, and Daniel Schneider. We still have room for first-rate material to fill out the current volume, and I urge our readers to send us their new work on James for consideration. Also, for publication In our spring issue (to be dedicated to Leon Edel), we solicit brief comments from colleagues on the uses they have been able to make of Edel's work on James. (The deadline for submitting these comments is April 15). The mail election of new members of the Board of Directors of the Henry James Society Is now under way, and I want to take note here of the retirement of two members of the original board. Dennis O'Connor 's enthusiasm as a member of the organizing committee of the Society and, especially, his proposal that the HJR feature a series of Centennial Essays helped to...