The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1887–1888 – Volume 1

This first volume in The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1887–1888 contains 154 letters, of which 94 are published for the first time, written from early January to December 22, 1887. These letters mark Henry James’s ongoing efforts to care for his sister, develop his work, strengthen his professional status, build friendships, engage timely political and economic issues, and maximize his income. James details work on “The Aspern Papers,” Partial Portraits, and plans The Reverberator. This volume opens with James in the midst of a long sojourn in Italy and concludes with his inquiring about both the status of his essay to the American Copyright League and also the story “The Liar.”

Henry James (1843–1916) was an American author and literary critic. He wrote some two dozen novels, including The Portrait of a Lady and The Golden Bowl, and 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 of Henry James Framed: Material Representations of the Master (Nebraska, 2022), among others.

Greg W. Zacharias is a professor of English and the director of the Center for Henry James Studies at Creighton University. He is editor of the Henry James Review and of A Companion to Henry James.

Katie Sommer has been associate editor of the Complete Letters of Henry James series since 2007 and has worked on the Henry James letters project since 2001.

Sarah Wadsworth is a professor of English at Marquette University. She is the author of In the Company of Books: Literature and Its “Classes” in Nineteenth-Century America.