Reading Historically/Reading Selectively: The Bostonians in the Century, 1885–1886

When The Bostonians appeared in the Century in thirteen installments (February 1885-February 1886) it stirred little interest. The silence was “deathly,” James wrote. Restoring The Bostonians to its initial publication context enables us to reconstruct reading strategies and cultural preoccupations that explain the negative reception of the novel. With the “romance of reunion” thriving in the mid-1880s, public discourse avoided the prospect of intractable sectional division. Yet acrimonious sectional feeling pervades The Bostonians, particularly the portrait of Basil. James’s representation of gender, slavery, war, and national reconciliation challenged conventions of discourse for controversial issues that post-Reconstruction readers preferred to avoid.