Henry James: Book. 3

In view of the length of Henry James’s career and the exceptional range and diversity of his writings, this study, which succeeds the late Michael Swan’s has been expanded into three essays. The first introduces the theme which was to dominate the whole of James’s creative life, ‘the complex fate’ of the American living in Europe, and surveys his achievement up to the age of thirty-eight, culminating in The Portrait of a Lady. The second covers the period of James’s continuous residence in London (1881-1897). It contains an appreciation of his three major ‘social’ novels in the naturalistic mode, The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, and The Tragic Muse. It also touches on his criticism of fiction and his travel writings and examines the short novels and stories in which this period is especially rich: these include The Aspern Papers, The Spoils of Poynton, What Maisie Knew, and The Turn of the Screw. The third deals with James’s last years at Rye, and devotes most of its space to the three masterpieces of that period, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. It also considers James’s final impression of his native land, recorded in The American Scene, and discusses one of the central paradoxes in James’s artistic career, the desire to have experience without involvement.
Dr Tanner (1935-1998) was a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge and a University Lecturer in English. He has published books on American and English writers, including Conrad’s Lord Jim, The Reign of Wonder, Saul Bellow, and City of Words, and Adultery in the Novel: Contract and Transgression. In addition, he was the author of numerous articles on 19th and 20th century English, American, and European writers and edited a number of works including three of Jane Austen’s novels and a collection of critical articles on James. He was a visiting professor at many American universities, and lectured for the British Council in France, Italy, Holland, Poland, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary.