From the Editor

Review of James Gargano, Critical Essays on Henry James: The Early Novels and Critical Essays on Henry James: The Late Novels. By William R. Macnaughton.............. 302 Index to Volume 12...................................... 304 From the Editor As readers of this column may recall, a year ago we invited colleagues to volunteer as book reviewers, lamenting, at the same time, that we had over the years fallen short of our aim of reviewing all new books on James in a timely fashion. We were pleased that our call for reviewers was answered by several dozen correspondents; we seek more reviewers still. The first fruits of a campaign begun last November to recoup our reviewing position are represented in the current issue—discussions in eleven reviews and a review-essay of fourteen books, most of them published in 1989. In addition, we have in house ready to publish in the winter and spring issues (13.1 and 13.2) nearly twenty additional reviews of recent books, extending through 1990. This surge in reviewing is in large measure the work of Bainard Cowan, who began to work with me on the HJR in 1978, when we were getting set to launch the journal the following year. For twelve years, through the spring, 1991, issue, Bainard Cowan served as Associate Editor with special responsibility for reviews. He brought to his work on the journal his own deep commitment to scholarship, criticism, and the life of the mind. Although Bainard has stepped down—succeeded as review editor, I am happy to report, by our colleague John Lowe—he has earned my lasting gratitude for his work on the HJR; may the stamp of his humane temper long remain upon it. Also one year ago in this column, we wrote of the heavy backlog under which the HJR has been laboring. We have made considerable progress in cutting into that backlog, and it appears that during 1992 we will achieve the goal we set last year of being able to assure contributors that no more than twelve months will pass between acceptance and publication. This advance has been secured by adding extra signatures to each issue in the volume that concludes with the present issue. Thus, whereas each previous annual volume published under our distribution agreement with Johns Hopkins has contained perhaps 225 to 230 numbered pages of editorial copy (three issues of eighty pages each, including four pages of unnumbered front matter), the current volume has run to over three hundred pages of editorial copy. Volume 12 thus has offered our readers ajournai expanded by 33% with no increase in subscription rates. We are delighted that we have been able to offer this lagniappe during a period in which postal rates and paper prices, not to mention printing costs, have been rising much faster than the overall rate of inflation. We hope that our readers will also be pleased that we intend to sustain the same 33% expansion of the journal in volume thirteen with an increase in the price of each individual subscription/James Society membership of only about 10%—from $19 to $21. Your subscription money is just enough to keep the HJR afloat; indeed, (Continued on p. 307) (Continued from verso of Contents page) for volume 10, we had a loss of about $1,200, while in volume 11 we came out about $3,200 ahead, chiefly because we did not conduct, during 1990, the kind of direct mail marketing campaign responsible for the very necessary circulation growth the journal has had over the last four years: without the increases we have achieved of about one hundred subscribers per year, the HJR could scarcely have remained viable. Operating without cash subsidy except for $1,000 per year provided by the College of Arts & Sciences here at LSU, the HJR depends on your subscription for its lifeblood. We hope you will stay with us. Do stay with us at least through 1993, when the James Society will cosponsor with New York University and a variety of major museums and libraries in New York City a celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Henry James's birth. I just returned from a meeting in...