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31:3 Book Reviews So far as I am concemed you are absolutely free to go and see any men you like in their own garçonnière, and to leave me alone while you do it if necessary. . . . my ideas are fairly broad. I am rather fond of you, & I have no doubts of you. At the same time, perfect freedom should not lead you into exaggeration. And above all it should not lead you into being constantly rude to your husband by neglecting the elementary politeness which is due him. . . . You are in danger of making a fool of yourself with your husband. Don't do it. Your husband is worth caring for & worth treating properly. He is also very strong and very clever and his affection will not lead him into excusing too much. I can excuse a lot on the ground of ill-health & nerves; and I do. But not all. And do not make the mistake of thinking you are a femme incomprise. You aren't, at any rate by me. Even when he admonished and he did so freely, he did so without rancor, and he did not withdraw his love or deny his affections. The letters give plenty of evidence of Bennett in action, but they never provide any instances of rage or uncontrolled anger or petty childishness. The first volume detailed the growth and development of Bennett the literary man; volumes two and three illustrate Bennett the public man of letters, and volume four completes the picture by giving the reader an intimate view into the personal world of a significant writer of the early twentieth century. Professor Hepbum has provided us with a valuable tool for gaining a better understanding of Arnold Bennett, who was a remarkable man and impressive literary artist, and the literary world of the Edwardians. The edition is a model for all serious scholars to admire and, it is to be hoped, emulate. Earl E. Stevens Rhode Island College JAMES'S SELECTED LETTERS Henry James Selected Letters. Ed. Leon Edel. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987. $29.95 Leon Edel's long Jamesian labours have woven a tangled bibliographical web for the student of James's letters. With pardonable pride he chalks up his own achievement in relation to his predecessor, Percy Lubbock, whose two-volume selection appeared in 1920, four years after James's death. Whereas Lubbock published four hundred letters, Edel published over a thousand in the four volumes issued between 1974 and 1984—though this was, of course, still a selection with no pretence at completeness. Now he has selected 166 letters from 346 31:3 Book Reviews his selection and added "two dozen" (actually 25) that have never been printed before and are "now publishable in the new and freer climate of our time." For some reason he does not seem to mention yet another selection for which he was responsible; this, inverting the title of the present volume, appeared as Selected Letters of Henry James in 1956 and contains "some hundred and twenty of the thousands of letters written by Henry James." Anyone might be forgiven for wondering for whom this new selection is intended. The introduction declares, with palpable lack of conviction, that it "is mainly intended, I suppose, for the anonymous 'general reader,'" but such a reader hardly needs a book at this price, or one that is too bulky and heavy to read conveniently in bed or on a bus or train. The reader's purpose would surely have been better served by reissuing the four volumes as modestly priced paperbacks in a revised edition that included the new letters. For his or her part, the hapless student is saddled with an edition that mainly duplicates what is available elsewhere but contains a few letters not otherwise available. None of this is James's fault. However, in view of his reaction to seeing the privately printed copy of his sister's diary, which he promptly destroyed, he might have been less than enthusiastic about the editor's quarryings (not to mention the new and freer climate of our time). It has long been recognized that James is...

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