The Europeans by Henry James (review)

At this late date, no one could be blamed for harboring misgivings about the need for new editions of the novels of Henry James, one of the most perennially read and researched writers in all of literature. However, the general editors of the Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James—of which the title under review here is a part—offer a noteworthy justification for their undertaking. They see a need for “a full scholarly, informative, historical edition of James’s work, presenting the texts in carefully checked, accurate form, with detailed annotations and extensive introductions” (xiii). The problem with so many editions available today, as the editors see it, is that they have been heavily revised—as in the case of the widely read New York Edition (1907-09), which James arranged— or have been otherwise altered from the original manuscripts. Therefore, as a general rule the editors have chosen to work from the first published book edition of each novel, convinced that “emphasis on the first context in which it was written and read will permit an unprecedented fullness of attention to the transformations in James’s writing over five decades, as well as the rich literary and social contexts of their original publication” (xiii).

One could easily object to this selection criterion. First versions— of artworks of any kind, not only novels—are often so restricted by the demands and deadlines of publishers and patrons that they can scarcely be regarded as more authentic than later versions over which the artist exerts more control. Unlike the volume editors of such famous works as The Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians, however, Susan M. Griffin is able to circumvent this complication altogether. Since James did not include The Europeans in the New York Edition, Griffin has only to decide among versions that appeared within a few years of one another. In this instance, the rationale for settling on the first edition—the 1878 English edition, issued by Macmillan—seems unimpeachable; it is known that James reviewed proofs of that edition, and besides, the subsequent American edition resembles it closely enough. Although Griffin’s edition is not without its shortcomings, it is, finally, a most welcome contribution.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Because The Europeans is little known today, a brief description of it is in order. Published in serial form beginning in 1878, this novel is one of James’s earliest fictions, following on the heels of such well-remembered works as The American and the tale that established him for English and American audiences, “Daisy Miller.” It is one among many of his novels of manners focusing on the collisions of Americans with Europeans, but this story is unusual for James in that the collision occurs on American soil rather than abroad. The plot is simple. A pair of European siblings, Eugenia and Felix, pays a visit to Boston on the pretext of meeting their estranged American relatives. Unbeknownst to everyone else, her brother included, the cunning Eugenia is actually on the hunt for a new husband, facing, as she is, a politically motivated annulment of her morganatic marriage. However, Felix—a charming, dilettantish painter—proves far luckier in love, wooing and wedding the younger of his two country cousins, Gertrude Wentworth. Ironically, although the novel ends with a spate of ostensibly happy marriages, none of them includes Eugenia, the character to whose storyline marriage remains most central.

Griffin’s lively introduction to the novel does much to help us understand the external influences driving James’s plotting of The Europeans, whose lightheartedness is atypical of the novelist. We learn that many readers had bemoaned the unremitting bleakness of The American, amplified by its despondent ending (in which the millionaire protagonist is denied the hand of his French love interest and effectively expelled from European society). These complaints about The American compelled James to craft a cheerier tale for his next major project. As he wrote to William...