The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1880–1883: Volume 1 - Hardcover

James, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803285477 ISBN 13: 9780803285477

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2016

Synopsis

 Recipient of the “Approved Edition” seal from the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Scholarly Editions

This volume of The Complete Letters of Henry James: 1880–1883 includes 122 letters, 67 of which are published for the first time, written between June 6, 1880, and October 20, 1881. The letters record Henry James’s confirmation of his identity as a London resident, follow his struggles with the complexities of his professional life, and illustrate his closer attention to family and friends. His friends, such as Henry and Clover Adams, and family members, such as his brother, William, view him as their resident Londoner. When his sister, Alice, and her companion, Katharine Loring, travel to Britain, James both supervises Alice’s state of health and also reports on its status to their parents.
 
The letters show Henry James’s professional life as he shifts away from writing pot-boiling reviews and short fiction toward the greater novels that continue to be associated with him, especially The Portrait of a Lady. We also see James negotiating with publishers and arranging whenever possible simultaneous publication in Britain and the United States in order to maximize his writing income. This volume concludes with James’s much-anticipated return to his native America, buoyed by his completion of The Portrait of a Lady. The journey marked a significant milestone in the author’s life.
 

About this title

About the Author:

Henry James (1843–1916) was an American author and literary critic. He wrote some two dozen novels and when he died he left behind more than ten thousand letters.
Michael Anesko is a professor of English and American studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is a general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James and the author, most recently, of Monopolizing the Master: Henry James and the Politics of Modern Literary Scholarship.
Greg W. Zacharias is a professor of English and the founder and director of the Center for Henry James Studies at Creighton University. He is the editor of A Companion to Henry James and the coeditor of Tracing Henry James.
Katie Sommer has been an associate editor of the Complete Letters of Henry James series since 2007 and has worked on the Henry James letters project since 2001.
Susan M. Griffin is a professor of English at the University of Louisville and the editor of the Henry James Review. She is the editor of The Europeans, in the new Cambridge Edition.
 

Review:

“This latest volume of the Complete Letters represents, no less than its forebears, an inestimable contribution to readers hitherto obliged to hunt down James’s Letters in various selections or scattered archives, and deserves to be greeted with the same jubilant chorus of praise and gratitude.”—Alicia Rix, Times Literary Supplement
  (Alicia Rix 2016-02-25)

“This edition is not just notable for its astonishing ambition, however; even at this early stage, it must also be reckoned a signal achievement. By every measure, the volumes we have so far are simply outstanding in every major respect. . . . The result is an embarrassment of critical and biographical riches.”—Bruce Bawer, New Criterion (Bruce Bawer 2016-02-25)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0803285477
• ISBN 13: 9780803285477
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 408
• Editor: Zacharias Greg W., Anesko Michael