Henry James's Style of Retrospect traces James's engagement with the writing of the recent past across the last twenty-five years of his life and examines the thoroughgoing change his style underwent in this last phase of his career, as his focus turned from the observation of contemporary manners to biographical commemoration and autobiographical reminiscence, and the balance of his output gradually shifted from fiction to non-fiction. The 'late personal writings' of the book's subtitle are works of retrospective non-fiction. They are a varied group, representing a broad array of genres and occasions: commemorative essays and obituary tributes, textual revisions and accounts of revisiting familiar places, cultural and literary criticism, biography and autobiography, and family memoir. Oliver Herford proposes that we read the late personal writings as a coherent sequence, bound together by a close texture of cross-references and allusive echoes, and united by James's newly discovered sense for the literary possibilities of non-fiction. Closely analyzing the style of these writings, this study offers a boldly revisionist account of the way style itself challenges and preoccupies the very late James. A linked series of innovative close readings takes the major works of this period in sequence, addressing a key point of style in each: particular attention is paid to procedures of reference (to the historical past, to real persons and places and objects), a dimension of style often neglected and sometimes actively slighted in analyses of James's late work. Henry James's Style of Retrospect asks what it means for so distinguished a novelist to alter the foundations of his written manner so strikingly in late life, and shows how we may begin to reconfigure our understanding of late Jamesian aesthetics accordingly.

Henry James's Style of Retrospect examines the last twenty-five years in the writing life of Henry James (1843-1916), one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century. It addresses a significantly under-appreciated dimension of James's late-life output: not his fiction, but rather the substantial body of retrospective and commemorative non-fiction (the 'late personal writings' of the title) which he began to produce in the 1890s, and whichcame to assume a leading role in the last phase of his career. It addresses these works from a literary-critical viewpoint, analysing the way James's style changed in response to the conditions imposed onhim--but also the opportunities revealed to him--by the project of writing about the real past; the book's main contribution is to develop a cumulative analysis of his style in the period 1890DS 1915. It also has a biographical aspect, however, and tells a story of his professional and emotional life in these years that particularly emphasises his investment in historical and personal continuity, his sense of the duties of commemoration, and his interest in the experiences of ageing andremembering.

Henry James’ Travel: Fiction and Non-Fiction offers a multifaceted approach to Henry James’ idea and practice of travel from the perspective of the globalized world today. Each chapter addresses a different selection of James’ fiction and non-fiction and offers a different approach towards the ideas that are still with us today: history reflected in art and architecture, the tourist gaze, museum culture, transnationalism, and the return home. As a whole, the book encompasses both early and late fiction and non-fiction by Henry James, giving the reader a sense of how his idea of travel evolved over several decades of his creative activity and shows how thin the line between fiction and non-fiction travel writing really is.

Publisher description

This is the first scholarly edition of an important group of critical writings by Henry James, the Prefaces to his New York Edition (1907–9). It will be of value to James scholars and to scholars and advanced students of 19th- and 20th-century British and American literature and book history.

The American short story has always been characterized by exciting aesthetic innovations and an immense range of topics. This handbook offers students and researchers a comprehensive introduction to the multifaceted genre with a special focus on recent developments due to the rise of new media. Part I provides systematic overviews of significant contexts ranging from historical-political backgrounds, short story theories developed by writers, print and digital culture, to current theoretical approaches and canon formation. Part II consists of 35 paired readings of representative short stories by eminent authors, charting major steps in the evolution of the American short story from its beginnings as an art form in the early nineteenth century up to the digital age. The handbook examines historically, methodologically, and theoretically the coming together of the enduring narrative practice of compression and concision in American literature. It offers fresh and original readings relevant to studying the American short story and shows how the genre performs American culture.