In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Michael Anesko. "Friction With the Market" : Henry James and the Profession of Authorship. New York: Oxford U P, 1986. 258 pp. $22.95. Michael Anesko takes his title "Friction With the Market" from Henry James's observation that interaction with the marketplace with all of its difficulties is nonetheless a "benefit" for "solitary artists too much steeped in their mere personal dreams." While this title thus suggests a study that will argue for the beneficial influence of market conditions on James's work, Anesko's aim in the book is the more neutral one of showing how the friction James encountered in his relations with publishers shaped his behavior as a professional writer with works to place and how the concerns engendered by such friction helped shape his work itself. Anesko offers his book as a counterbalance to the ivory tower view of James the New Critics left us. In this I think he protests a bit too much: by now we have a number of studies that place James in the context of his own times. But Anesko does have a new story to tell: he draws on a wealth of unpublished letters from James and his publishers to supplement what we already have in print. The result is a vivid picture of the changing literary marketplace in the nineteenth century, of the special opportunities and hazards open to the transatlantic writer, and of James's efforts to be both an artist and a businessman. Anesko begins by noting James's profound notion of artistic integrity and his realistic and often troubling awareness that an author must have an audience if he is to thrive. In describing this, Anesko sets James against his own father and Nathaniel Hawthorne, his literary father, both of whom treated writing as a genteel endeavor and both of whom were unable to understand the changing conditions of the literary marketplace as the century progressed. In contrast, Anesko observes, "The rapid rise and expansion of the reading public, the proliferation of periodicals, and the development of the modern publishing firm all contributed to the making of Henry James; the shape of his career parallels (and, in some respects , anticipates) the transformation of literature's status in the culture at large" (33). With this groundwork, Anesko turns his attention to James's negotiations in the marketplace. In his preface, he notes that because James was dependent on his literary income until 1893 when his share of the family inheritance reverted to him after Alice's death, his study will concentrate on James's middle years rather than his major phase. Accordingly, the early chapters of the book show us James learning his way around and developing confidence as a businessman, while the heart of the book focuses on the negotiations that affected and accompanied The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, and The Tragic Muse—books written when James was well established in England and dealing routinely with both English and American publishers. The book concludes, in apparent violation of Anesko's announced concern with James's middle years, with a discussion of the New York Edition—a chapter so interesting that one would not want to see it dropped. Two appendices follow: one on James's interest in the movement for international copyright and the other a computation of James's literary income. Anesko's method throughout is to detail the negotiations with publishers that pertain to each book he considers and then to turn to the book itself and show us how James's concern with artistic integrity and with market conditions— "self and "society" are the terms he often uses—manifests itself in the book. Review of Anesko, Friction with the Market 73 In the course of doing this, Anesko sketches the history of publishing in the second half of the nineteenth century, noting such things as the ambiguities created by the absence of an international copyright law, the differences between American and English methods of publication and distribution, and the rise of the literary agent. He shows us a James who is astute and canny enough to take such risks as violating the genteel American custom of "courtesy of the trade" (an unwritten agreement...

pdf

Share