From the Editor

THE HENRY JAMES REVIEW Volume 11, Number 3 Fall, 1990 Table of Contents Henry James and the Ethical Moment. By Myler Wilkinson.............................................153 The Incredible Floating Man: Henry James's Lambert Strether. By Reginald Abbott..............................................176 Sibyls, Seekers, and Sacred Founts in the Tales of Henry James. By Larry A. Gray................................................189 Ironies of Loss in The Finer Grain. By Richard S. Lyons.............................................202 Review of Adeline R. Tintner, The Book World of Henry James: Appropriating the Classics and The Pop World of Henry James: From Fairy Tales to Science Fiction. By Frances Murphy Zauhar.............213 Review of Brenda Murphy, American Realism and American Drama, 1880-1940. By William W. DemasÃ-es............................220 Review of Benjamin Newman, Searching for the Figure in the Carpet in the Tales of Henry James: Reflections of an Ordinary Reader. By Richard P. Gage..............................................223 Index to Volume 11.........................................................226 From the Editor The James boom goes on, and I return to the editorship after a sabbatical year with immense gratitude to Veronica Makowsky for the splendid job she did as Acting Editor and with dismay at our big backlog of accepted but not yet published articles. Professor Makowsky, I am very happy to report, has agreed to relinquish her former post as Associate Editor and to become Co-editor. As for the backlog, I would like to follow the example of my colleague James Olney; as a general rule he takes nothing for the Southern Review that cannot be brought out within a year. Our lag time at the moment is about eighteen months. Lack of funds precludes our adding an extra issue to an annual volume to try to compress that lag, though we may add extra pages to one or more of the issues in volume 12 (1991). Until the backlog is reduced, we can scarcely help subjecting new submissions to intensified editorial scrutiny. I am calling for two special kinds of contributions, nevertheless. First, as forecast in this column last spring, the Henry James Society will sponsor a series of books on James, to be published by the AMS Press with the Society's imprint. For the most part, these will be original critical and scholarly works of high quality, though we may also decide to include in the series facsimile editions of works by James himself, with new scholarly introductions, as well as out-ofprint classics of James criticism. I will serve as General Editor of the series; no manuscript will be accepted, however, without review by at least one other person drawn from a series editorial board. The AMS Press is devoted to publication and distribution of scholarly books and facsimiles; AMS publishes, for instance, the standard bibliography on the eighteenth century, The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, one of the sponsored publications of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Submissions and queries should be addressed to me here at the HJR. Second, we are eager to compile a list of persons interested in reviewing new books on Henry James for the HJR. Next to our backlog, what has distressed us most in reviewing the operations of the journal is the pace at which we have been getting out book reviews. Although we have taken steps to streamline our book review procedures in the editorial office, our biggest problem has been recurrent long delays in hearing from persons to whom we have written offering books for review, many of whom decline. Hence our desire to develop a list of people who would welcome invitations to review books. Finally, we offer here the following announcements and updates: James Society Meetings, 1990: 1990 James Society President William R. Macnaughton will preside over two Society sessions at the Chicago MLA meeting in December. The first, Cultural Criticism on Henry James, will be held from 10:15 to 11:30 a.m. on Friday, December 28, in the Hyatt Regency, Columbus Hall K & L, and will include four papers: "Visions, Practice, and Achievement: The Structure of Henry James's Early Career," by Bonney MacDonald; "Degeneration and Feminism: Cultural Determinations Shaping Character in Henry James's The Bostonians," by Wendy Graham; "Henry James and the Discourse of Anti-Semitism," by Jonathan Freedman; and "Civilization...