The Correspondence of William James (review)

Book Reviews The Correspondence of William James General Editor: John J. McDermott Editors: Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth N. Berkeley Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992-2004, 12 volumes dccxxviii + 8,228 pp., S500,1 0-8139-2318-2 These twelve volumes represent the completion of the second half of a project that was begun in 1971. In conjunction with the nineteen volumes of The Works of William James,2 The Correspondence offers scholars access to the James corpus in a critically edited form that has earned the seal of the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association. (Volume Six of The Correspondence also won the MLA's Morton N. Cohen Award for a Distinguished Edition of Letters.) The first three volumes are devoted exclusively to the letters between William and his brother Henry;3 the other nine volumes contain his correspondence with other individuals, within the family and without. I am undecided about the wisdom of segregating the William-Henry letters. On the one hand, it is certainly nice to witness the concentrated back-and-forth interaction of the two brothers; on the other, this interaction has artificially isolated Henry from all the other correspondents. Each volume begins with a foreword by John J. McDermott that acknowledges the many debts that were incurred during its production, followed by an introduction that attempts to provide a framework for understanding the letters. The authors of the various introductions are: Gerald E. Myers (1), Daniel Mark Fogel (2), Robert Dawidoff (3), Giles Gunn (4), Linda Simon (5, 6), Robert Coles (7), Edward H. Madden (8), Donald McQuade (9), Hilary Putnam (10), and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (11, 12). Each volume then continues with a bibliographical discussion, and an explanation of editorial method. The letters themselves are followed by a biographical register, the textual apparatus detailing any alterations and corrections made by the authors while writing the letters, and an index. Volumes Four through Twelve also list and describe calendared letters, and contain a chronology that sequentially lists all of the known letters, beginning in 1856, with the WilliamHenry letters recorded in their proper place. Some of the volumes include Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Summer, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 3 704 Book Reviews alternate versions or parts of letters in an appendix. Volume Twelve also contains, in an appendix, some 140 letters that were uncovered too late to allow for their publication in their proper sequence or that remain undateable. In addition, the final volume contains a brief afterword by McDermott that elaborates some of the history of the project and reminds us of the rehabilitation of James's philosophical reputation that has occurred over the last three and a half decades, in no small measure due to the quality of the thirty-one volumes produced by the James Project. As hinted earlier, these twelve volumes do not contain every word of all of the letters of James and his correspondents. Some unknown number of letters was simply mislaid. While during the course of preparing this edition some of these 'lost' letters were recovered, surely more remain to be found. Other letters were deliberately destroyed by the family after James's death, as Skrupskelis suspects, "to retain control of James's reputation by presenting to the public its own version of his life and character" (l:li). These letters are, of course, presumed lost forever. Turning to the approximately 9,400 that are available, not all of them are printed in full in these twelve volumes. Working with so large a number of letters — twenty volumes' worth — the editors were forced to calender about 30%. The principles that they used seem quite sensible. James's own letters have priority, especially when he is discussing philosophy, religion, political and social ideas, significant individuals and events, and his own professional activities. Also printed in full are letters that demonstrate his relationships with family members and colleagues. Those letters that were viewed as "primarily informational in content" tended to be calendared, along with routine acceptances and refusals of various sorts, and letters to his publishers. The letters that were sent to James are treated "more severely" (12:xlix); and, in some cases...