A Companion To Henry James Studies

Features

Description

Twenty leading Jamesians, in chapters written especially for this reference volume, canvas all areas of Henry James studies, including James's own criticism and critical theory, his novels, tales, plays, travel writings, notebooks, letters, and autobiographies, and his critical reception. Also featured are two appendixes comprising annotated chronologies, one of James's principal publications in book form, the other of landmarks of James criticism and scholarship.

The first section, on criticism and theory, opens with a concise overview of criticism on Henry James. The central section of the volume is devoted to James's fiction, from the early years, middle years, the experimental period, and the later fiction, including the short stories. Additional writings focus on special topics, including comparison of James with his European peers, a study of James from a feminist view, an assessment of James's use of the visual arts, and an analysis of James's many revisions of his own works.

A section on James's nonfiction includes his epistolary art, his travel book English Hours, his drama, and the social commentary in James's account of his return to America from an expatriate life abroad in The American Scene. The scholars draw upon nearly seven hundred books and articles, which are compiled in a list of works cited.

Itself a companion to Robert Gale's A Henry James Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 1989), A Companion to Henry James Studies is a carefully structured survey of scholarship, designed as a library reference volume that will be of interest and value to students and scholars of Henry James and specialists in American literature generally.

Review: ?Covering all aspects of James studies, the 20 original essays in this companion are divided into sections on Criticism and Theory, Fiction, and Nonfiction. The essays provide excellent critical and bibliographic overviews of the current state of James studies in such areas as James's theory of fiction, his tales, and his inveterate habit of revising his fiction.

The essays are by established scholars, most of whom have published extensively on James and/or his time. Even the appendixes are interesting with the first a lightly annotated chronological listing of James's books, including citations to the magazines in which many of these books first appeared serially.

The second appendix lists landmarks of James criticism in chronological order. This is a fine resource for scholars and advanced students, though its state-of-the-art purpose will make an update imperative in a decade or so.?-Library Journal