Henry James

For scholars as for the rest of the world, this was a difficult year. But like James as a small boy who enjoyed his swing even in a rainstorm, I have found "pleasure amid difficulties." Our editors, David Nordloh and Gary Scharnhorst, responded generously to my requests for books and articles when I faced closed libraries and restricted interlibrary loans when preparing this chapter. And despite its decrease in quantity, James scholarship in 2019 continues its tradition of high quality. Peter Collister's new edition of The American Scene is an indispensable guide to this experimental narrative, while clusters of essays on The Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors (the most frequently taught major novels) should renew debates among teachers and students. Other critics focus on neglected shorter tales, some of which prove to be paradigmatic. Jesse Matz, for example, treats "The Tone of Time" as a key to James's temporal extensions; Collister discusses "The Birthplace" as an expression of the author's ambivalence toward the emerging phenomenon of literary tourism; and Joseph Elkanah Rosenberg examines "Crapy Cornelia" for its surprising clues to James's mixed opinions of a new genre, the cinema. Finally, this year's special topic of the Henry James Review (HJR) elicited so many critical responses that some articles will appear in the first issue for 2020.

i Editions and Biographical Studies

Peter Collister, the editor of recent recollections of James's autobiographies and his writings on art and drama (see American Literary Scholarship [AmLS] 2011, p. 106, and AmLS 2016, p. 85), has published another key edition, a richly documented version of The American Scene (Cambridge). The copy-text is the first British edition (Chapman & Hall, 1907), which (unlike its American counterpart) includes James's 225 thematic page headings and the five-page ending of his final chapter on Florida. Collister's critical introduction (pp. xxii–xlii) highlights the author's invention of a new genre, one combining cultural critique with "a highly personal series of gathered impressions." James's narrative technique, explains the editor, is likewise innovative; its first-person allusions are resistant to self-disclosure, though biographical critics may mark the persona's interest in young men; and the viewpoint frequently shifts to that of "a more ostensibly objective third person," labeled variously as the "restless analyst," "the ancient contemplative person," "the impressible story-seeker," and the "visionary tourist." Despite such protean efforts to encode linguistic nuances and multiple points of view, "the text seems compelled … to acknowledge limitations in its observer's capacity to read and explain," in this respect becoming "self-reflexive" and "protomodernist." But unlike many other admirers of aesthetic virtuosity, Collister admits that James's representations of African Americans and Jews reflect conventional prejudices. A series of appendixes offers additional contexts for the author's idiosyncratic narrative: a detailed chronology of James's American tour (June 1904–July 1905), along with his journal entries; the galley proofs and manuscript version of his first chapter, which illuminate his process of writing and revision; Collister's reconstruction of the author's visit to New York's Lower East Side; James's two American lectures, "The Lesson of Balzac" and "The Question of Our Speech"; and his retrospective essays on the speech and manners of American women. A concluding bibliography enhances the volume's usefulness to other scholars and readers.

Michael Anesko's "Hardened Bachelors: Henry James and Queer Filiation in Edwardian London" (HJR 40: 18–29) presents a compact version of a book-length study published last year (see AmLS 2018, p. 87). Anesko documents James's membership in "a queer, complicated maze of social relationships," including those with musician Victor Beigel and architect John J. Borie Jr., the designer of a memorial tablet to James surviving despite the efforts of Harry James, the author's nephew and executor, to replace it. Critics who lament James's expatriation should acknowledge that "such a rupture might have been a precondition for apprehending the empowering possibilities of same-sex desire."

ii Sources, Parallel Studies, Influences, and Adaptation

Two essays compare James's representations of temporality with the practices of other...