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Reviewed by:
  • The Birthplace by Henry James
  • Dana J. Ringuette
Review of Henry James. The Birthplace. “Foreword” by Mark Rylance. London: Hersperus, 2012. 142 pp. £10.00 (paperback).

While I would not hazard to guess at the algorithm used by the marketers at Oxford and Penguin to determine the prices of their trade paperback editions of James’s works, the price for this Hesperus Press edition, at £10 (just a shade over $15 as of this writing), is comparable. However, what the Hesperus Press offers in addition is 1) “The Birthplace” and “The Private Life” in a single edition, and 2) a handsomely designed and typeset edition at that, with a heavy cover stock, secure binding, and [End Page E-28] French flaps. Since its founding in 2002, Hesperus Press, according to its website, has published over three hundred titles by numerous authors. Four volumes are works by James, and each volume includes a foreword by a notable celebrity (Colm Tóibín, Libby Purves, David Lodge, and, in this case, Mark Rylance). Rylance was founding Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London and is a much celebrated stage and screen actor and playwright. This edition of James’s two stories is the fourth and latest to be published.

Why “The Private Life” is not included in the cover title is unclear to me, but it is interesting to recall that James included both stories, one following the other, in Volume 17 of the New York Edition. Nonetheless, the versions used by Hesperus Press are the first publications of the stories. “The Birthplace” was published in 1903 as part of James’s collection The Better Sort (London, Methuen & Co.), and “The Private Life” in April 1892 in the Atlantic Monthly. Not intended to be a scholarly edition, this volume includes minimal notes confined mostly to translating French words and phrases.

So one wonders, why review this publication in a scholarly journal, especially this particular one? I suppose there may be the issue of having the not-often-issued works conveniently published in one handy volume, were one, for example, to teach these works or simply to desire an attractive edition of two beautiful stories. But, the obvious reason to review any book by or on James is to survey what light it sheds upon the writer and his work. The illumination provided in this case is Mark Rylance’s—and the publisher’s—concern with “the Authorship question” that pits the doubters who believe that “Shakspere [the actor] didn’t write Shakespeare [the plays and poetry]” against the recalcitrant “Orthodox Shakespeare Academy,” which will not “embrace the possibility” that “someone else was involved, some other author or authors” in writing the works (xvii–xviii). It is clear from the foreword which camp Rylance is in—that is, the doubters.

And it is a pitched battle, certainly as it appears to this reviewer, who is more a casual observer of the controversy than an active participant. Just a quick review of the arguments, evidence, and responses on both sides reveals an intense rancor that suffuses the posts from either camp. Rylance cites two sources in his essay: the website “Shakespeare Authorship Coalition,” dedicated to “legitimizing the Shakespeare authorship by increasing awareness of reasonable doubt about the identity of William Shakespeare,” and Diana Price’s Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography. He also identifies more than a score of notables who have expressed doubt and skepticism about Shakespeare as author of the works, Henry and William James among them. For Rylance, and by way of introduction to these two stories by Henry, “the conversation revolves around the theme of identity; presumed, mistaken, discovered and, like nature herself, full of secrets” (viii). In fact he extends the issue further: “The relationship—indeed the trinity—between [sic] an author’s creation, an author’s apparent personality and an author’s audience, is the particular topic of conversation for James.” But when he takes it even further to conclude that “As in Shakespeare’s comedies, all is made manifest by love; the love and fascination we have for artists who touch us; the sometimes obsessional desire we have to be intimate with remarkable people,” it...

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