Synopses & Reviews
Henry James led a wandering life, which took him far from his native shores, but he continued to think of New York City, where his family had settled for several years during his childhood, as his hometown. Here Colm Tóibín, the author of the Man Booker Prize–shortlisted novel
The Master, a portrait of Henry James, brings together for the first time all the stories that James set in New York City. Written over the course of James's career and ranging from the deliciously tart comedy of the early "An International Episode" to the surreal and haunted corridors of "The Jolly Corner," and including "Washington Square", the poignant novella considered by many (though not, as it happens, by the author himself) to be one of James's finest achievements, the nine fictions gathered here reflect James's varied talents and interests as well as the deep and abiding preoccupations of his imagination. And throughout the book, as Tóibín's fascinating introduction demonstrates, we see James struggling to make sense of a city in whose rapidly changing outlines he discerned both much that he remembered and held dear as well as everything about America and its future that he dreaded most.
Stories included:
The Story of a Masterpiece
A Most Extraordinary Case
Crawford's Consistency
An International Episode
The Impressions of a Cousin
The Jolly Corner
Washington Square
Crapy Cornelia
A Round of Visits
Synopsis
New York Review Books has taken a new look at Henry James by publishing some of his little-known masterworks:
The Other House, a savage story of murder; the late comedy
The Outcry, full of frou-frou extravagance; and
The Ivory Tower, his brooding final fragment about an America that has sold its soul to Mammon.
The ongoing exploration of James's incomparable art takes a new turn with this collection, the first volume to gather together all the stories set in his hometown of New York City. Edited and introduced by Colm Tóibìn, whose novel about James, The Master, is an international bestseller, the stories collected here span the course of James's writing life and offer a fascinating picture not only of the many guises of the great city but of the author's varied interests and rich range of tones. Composed over some forty years, they present, as Tóibìn notes, "a strange and revealing biographical and artistic chart." From the smart comedy of An International Episode to the haunted, almost surreal corridors described in The Jolly Corner, these works give pleasure while affording a fascinating new perspective on the life and achievement of one of the supreme masters of the art of fiction.
Description
"Perhaps of all the provinces in [James's] realm whose contours remain shadowy
and whose topography is unresolved, the city of New York is a prime example.
James's writings about New York disclose, more than anything, an anger, quite
unlike any other anger in James, at what has been lost to him, what has been done,
in the name of commerce and material progress, to a place he once knew. It is not
an ordinary anger at the destruction of beauty and familiarity; it is much
stranger and more complex than that, and it deserves a great deal of attention." (From the Introduction by Colm Tóibín)
Henry James led a wandering life, which took him far from his native shores, but
he continued to think of New York City, where his family had settled for several
years during his childhood, as his hometown. Here Colm Tóibín, the author of the
Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Master, a portrait of Henry James, brings
together for the first time all the stories that James set in New York City.
Written over the course of James~Rs career and ranging from the deliciously tart
comedy of the early "An International Episode" to the surreal and haunted
corridors of "The Jolly Corner," and including Washington Square, the poignant
novella considered by many (though not, as it happens, by the author himself) to
be one of James's finest achievements, the nine fictions gathered here reflect
James's varied talents and interests as well as the deep and abiding
preoccupations of his imagination. And throughout the book, as Tóibín's
fascinating introduction demonstrates, we see James struggling to make sense of a
city in whose rapidly changing outlines he discerned both much that he remembered
and held dear as well as everything about America and its future that he dreaded
most.
Stories Included:
- The Story of a Masterpiece, 1868
- A Most Extraordinary Case, 1868
- Crawford's Consistency, 1876
- An International Episode, 1878
- The Impressions of a Cousin, 1883
- The Jolly Corner, 1908
- Washington Square
- Crapy Cornelia
- A Round of Visits
About the Author
Henry James (1843-1916), the younger brother of the psychologist William James and one of the greatest of American writers, was born in New York but lived for most of his life in England. Among the best known of his many stories and novels are
The Portrait of a Lady,
The Turn of the Screw, and
The Wings of the Dove.
The Ivory Tower, one of two novels that remained uncompleted at the time of James's death, joins his earlier works
The Other House and
The Outcry on the New York Review Classics list.
Colm Tóibín's novels include The Story of the Night, The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999, and most recently The Master, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction and lives in Dublin.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Story of a Masterpiece
A Most Extraordinary Case
Crawford’s Consistency
An International Episode
The Impressions of a Cousin
The Jolly Corner
Washington Square
Crapy Cornelia
A Round of Visits