From the Editor

The Henry James Review Fall, 1984 From the Editor Here at last is the first issue of volume 6 of the Henry James Review. As regular HJR subscribers know, we usually get our fall issue out in mid-winter. But this year we are a full five months behind our usual laggard schedule. Never fear though: despite our dilatoriness, the HJR-and the James Society too—are alive and well. Indeed , they are thriving. The journal has never had a richer backlog of material forthcoming, both for the remainder of volume 6 and for volume 7 too. And President Martha Banta has just announced the program for this year's annual meeting, a program that promises to be one of the most stimulating and enjoyable of a remarkable series. Looking ahead, then, first, here is the program for next year's James Society sessions at the December MLA meeting in Chicago: Paul John Eakin (Indiana University ), "Reference in biography: Henry James and the Fictions of Creativity"; James M. Cox (Dartmouth College), "James's Trials in Autobiography"; Elissa Greenwald (Rutgers University), "Henry James's Hawthorne"; and Jonathan E. Freedman (Yale University ), "James, Wilde, and Intertextual SelfDefinition ." I hope to see many of our members there to hear these papers on the intriguing topic Professor Banta has set for the meeting, "The Lives of Henry James." (I've already heard an early version of Professor Cox's paper, delivered here at LSU this spring at the International Symposium on Autobiography and Biography —a powerful, challenging, and entertaining reading of HJ's autobiographical volumes). Also of interest to James Society members is the completion earlier this month (May) of balloting in the 1985 election of officers. Adeline R. Tintner has been elected secretary/ treasurer. She will therefore become vice-president in 1986 and president in 1987, succeeding George Monteiro, current vice-president of the Society. J. A. Ward has been elected to the Board of Directors, where he joins Daniel Schneider and Elsa Nettels along with the aforementioned officers (Banta, Monteiro, Tintner). On behalf of the membership, I want to offer special thanks to Lyall H. Powers and James Gargano for having agreed to stand in opposition to Tintner and Ward on this year's election ballot. Looking back (and disregarding—yes, even trying to forget—the exasperating production fiascoes and delays that have kept this issue out of your hands for so long), I can only think of this past academic year as having presented plentiful material with rich appeal to Jamesians. The year saw, for example, the publication of several books of extraordinary interest, among others Howard Feinstein's Becoming William James, John Carlos Rowe's The Theoretical Dimensions of Henry James, and the two new volumes of Henry James's criticism edited for the Library of America by Leon Edel and Mark Wilson. The Library of America volumes include some nine hundred pages of James's literary criticism never before reprinted in book form!1 In December, at the MLA meeting in Washington, the James Society sponsored two exciting sessions on James (including a stiff, though cordial, and fascinatingly irresoluble clash between Alfred Habegger and Beverley Havilland on HJ's treatment of the women's movement in The Bostonians and on the actual status of feminism in America in the 1880s); there was, moreover, a third session devoted to James, and additional James papers were delivered in other sessions. In a more popular arena, the year also saw the release of the movie version of The Bostonians, dominated by Vanessa Redgrave's powerful portrayal of Olive Chancellor. Through the kindness of Sir Brian Batsford (the present tenant of Lamb House) and Professor Edgar Bürde (of SUNY, Plattsburgh), I was able last August to attend a special screening of The Bostonians as a guest of the Royal Oak Foundation, which sponsored the event (screening and dinner dance) the night before the film premiered as a benefit to raise funds for the rebuilding of the garden (continued on page 78) Volume VI Number 1 The Henry James Review FaU, 1984 (continued from page 2) room at Lamb House, the separate structure where James wrote his novels. Professor Bürde, who has...