The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1880–1883

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The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1880–1883

Volume 1

Henry James
Edited by Michael Anesko and Greg W. Zacharias
Associate Editor, Katie Sommer
With an introduction by Susan M. Griffin

The Complete Letters of Henry James Series

408 pages
9 illustrations, chronology

Hardcover

October 2016

978-0-8032-8547-7

$95.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

October 2016

978-0-8032-8827-0

$95.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

 ​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.
 

Author Bio

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.
 

Praise

“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
 

“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

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations    
Acknowledgments    
Introduction: A Finer Art, by Susan M. Griffin    
Symbols and Abbreviations    
Chronology     
Errata    

1880
June 6    To William Dean Howells    
June 6    To Mary Walsh James    
June 6    To Louise Chandler Moulton    
June 20    To Henry James Sr.    
July 3    To Henrietta Heathorn Huxley    
July 4    To Mary Walsh James    
July 10    To Maria Theresa Villiers Earle    
July 20    To William Dean Howells    
July 20    To Mary Walsh James    
July 26    To Grace Norton    
July 26    To Thomas Sergeant Perry    
July 30    To Thomas Sergeant Perry    
August 8    To Alice James    
August 8    To Francis Parkman    
August 18    To William Dean Howells    
August 19    To Henry James Sr. and Mary Walsh James    
August 19    To Grace Norton    
August 31    To William James    
August 31    To Thomas Sergeant Perry    
September 9    To Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams    
September 11    To William Dean Howells    
September 11    To Mary Walsh James    
September 20    To William Dean Howells    
September 20    To Frederick Macmillan    
September 20    To Grace Norton    
September 25    To Elizabeth Boott    
October 6    To Eliza Lynn Linton    
October 8    To Frederick Macmillan    
October 9    To Alice James    
October 11    To William Jones Hoppin    
October 13    To Alice James    
October 31    To Mary Walsh James    
November 7    To Grace Norton    
November 11    To William Dean Howells    
November 13    To William James    
November 13    To Charles Eliot Norton    
November 14    To Sarah Butler Wister    
November 18    To Henry James Sr.    
November 27    To William James    
November 28    To Mary Walsh James    
December 5    To William Dean Howells    
December 7    To Alice James    
December 13<n>18    To Archibald Philip Primrose, Lord Rosebery    
December 15    To Blanche Althea Elizabeth Holt Cookson    
December 16    To Walter Herries Pollock    
December 16    To Sir Garnet Joseph Wolseley    
December 18    To Lady Louisa Erskine Wolseley    
December 21    To Robert Thomson    
December 27    To Henry James Sr.    
December 28    To Frederick Macmillan    
December 28    To Grace Norton    

1881
January 4    To James Russell Lowell    
January 6    To Eveleen Tennant Myers    
January <b>9</b>, 11 <b><i>misdated</i></b> 10    To Mary Walsh James    
January 12    To John Walter Cross    
January 24    To Thomas Sergeant Perry    
January 30    To Alice James    
January 30    To Henry James Sr.    
February 7    To Mary Walsh James    
February 7    To Francis Turner Palgrave    
February 9    To William Jones Hoppin    
February 9    To Henrietta Reubell    
February 12    To Mary Smith Mundella    
<b>February 12 or 19</b> To Theodore Child    
February 16    To Thomas Sergeant Perry    
February 24    To Henry James Sr.    
February 24    To Frances "Fanny" Anne Kemble    
February 27    To Frederick Macmillan    
March 8    To Thomas Bailey Aldrich    
March 9    To Thomas Sergeant Perry    
March 16    To Sir John Forbes Clark    
March 16    To Mary Walsh James    
March 21    To William James    
March 22    To William James and Alice Howe Gibbens James    
March 24    To Frances "Fanny" Anne Kemble    
April 15    To James Ripley Osgood    
April 25    To Daniel Sargent Curtis    
April 27    To Katherine Louisa Cullen Boughton    
<b>May or June</b> To Katharine de Kay Bronson    
<b>May or June</b> To Katharine de Kay Bronson    
<b>May or June</b> To Katharine de Kay Bronson    
<b>May or June</b> To Phoebe Garnaut Smalley    
May 9    To Thomas Bailey Aldrich    
May 11    To Henry James Sr.    
May 31    To Henry Burr Barnes    
June 5    To Henry James Sr.    
June 6    To Henry James Sr.    
June 12    To Grace Norton    
June 24    To Katharine de Kay Bronson    
July 13    To Houghton, Mifflin and Company    
July 14    To Thomas Bailey Aldrich    
July 18    To Mary Walsh James    
July 18    To Francis Parkman    
July 19    To Katharine de Kay Bronson    
July 20    To Grace Norton    
July 31    To Henry James Sr.    
August 3    To Houghton, Mifflin and Company    
August 6    To Alice Howe Gibbens James    
August 8    To Thomas Bailey Aldrich    
August 8    To James Bryce    
August 9    To Houghton, Mifflin and Company    
August 16    To Houghton, Mifflin and Company    
August 18    To Grace Norton    
August 18    To Henrietta Reubell    
August 25    To Mary Walsh James    
August 28    To Frances Power Cobbe    
August 31    To Thomas Bailey Aldrich    
August 31    To Frederick Macmillan    
September 9    To Henry James Sr. and Mary Walsh James    
September 10    To Helen Leah Reed    
September 16    To Houghton, Mifflin and Company    
September 17     To Katharine Peabody Loring    
September 26    To James Russell Lowell    
September 28    To Alice James    
September 28    To Henrietta Reubell    
October 1    To Alice James    
October 4    To Katharine de Kay Bronson    
October 4    To William Dean Howells    
October 9    To Thomas Bailey Aldrich    
October 14    To Frederick Macmillan    
October 18    To Houghton, Mifflin and Company    
October 20    To Frederick Macmillan    

Biographical Register    
General Editors' Note    
Works Cited    
Index    

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