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American fiction writer Henry James played a major role in shaping the literary sensibility of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, not only through his own stories and novels, but also with his insightful and perceptive literary criticism. Essays in this volume address a number of significant American and British authors, including Walt Whitman, George Eliot and Charles Dickens.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mars 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776677931
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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VIEWS AND REVIEWS
* * *
HENRY JAMES
Contributions by
LE ROY PHILLIPS

*
Views and Reviews First published in 1908 Epub ISBN 978-1-77667-793-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77667-794-8 © 2015 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Introduction The Novels of George Eliot On a Drama of Mr. Browning Swinburne's Essays The Poetry of William Morris Matthew Arnold's Essays Mr. Walt Whitman The Poetry of George Eliot The Limitations of Dickens Tennyson's Drama Contemporary Notes on Whistler vs. Ruskin A Note on John Burroughs Mr. Kipling's Early Stories Endnotes
Introduction
*
Those whose palates are accustomed to the subtle flavours of the winesof the Rhine and Moselle can smack their lips and name the vintage atthe first taste. Likewise any one fairly familiar with the work of Mr.James during his forty years of literary activity can, after the readingof a single page taken at random, judge with a remarkable accuracy thedate of its composition. Yet the transition has not been abrupt and thestyles of writing which the author has adopted, early, middle and late,have blended in such a way that he has been bringing many of his earlierreaders, though some have fallen by the wayside, along with him to agenuine appreciation of his present work.
It is not unnatural but disappointing that those of the presentgeneration who chance to meet Mr. James in one of the later novels arenot as likely to seek a second volume as those who read Daisy Miller some thirty years ago when that study first appeared, so fresh in itsnote of charm and pathos, in the now almost unfindable brown wrappersof Harper's Half Hour Series, for they may forever miss a rareenjoyment.
In the critical papers which make up the contents of this book, thecharacteristics of the author's later style are wholly absent. Withoutthe date of the original appearance of these essays in periodical formbeing indicated, the chronological setting of this work is apparent. Nosentences with marvelously intricate complications of construction andwith expressions involved are in the author's method at this time, whilefor clearness and charm these views and reviews are admirable specimens,showing qualities which brought Mr. James his early readers and firstmade his name an essential feature of the announcements of publishers ofthe more discriminating periodicals forty years ago.
The earliest authenticated magazine article by Mr. James—printed whenhe was twenty-one—is a critical notice of Nassau W. Senior's Essays onFiction in The North American Review for October, 1864. From thistime until the appearance of his first volume —A Passionate Pilgrim andOther Tales, Boston: 1875—as many as one hundred and twenty-fiveserious literary notices contributed to periodicals can be traced tohim .
During this period it must also be remembered that Mr. James wasequally employed in writing short stories, art criticism and notes oftravel, both at home and abroad, and that these were also distinctivefeatures of the widely scattered journals in which they appeared.
In The North American Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Galaxy,Lippincott's Magazine, The New York Tribune, The Independent and someother periodicals, the authorship of such work was attributed to Mr.James on the publication of the articles or in regularly issuedindexes.
The articles in The Nation are seldom signed, and there is nopublished index showing the contributors to its files. In preparing arecent [1] bibliography of the writings of Henry James I had access to arecord which the late Wendell Phillips Garrison, who was Mr. Godkin'sassociate from the founding of the paper and after 1881 editor in chargeuntil June 28, 1906, had carefully kept of every author's work which hispaper had published since its first issue. The amount of matter whichMr. James had provided, and the variety of interests concerning which hewrote, made an amazing array of notes. It is from the early issues of The Nation that much of the contents of this volume is reprinted. OfMr. James's contributions to periodicals those to this paper wereperhaps the most notable as well as the most frequent. He wasrepresented in its first number—July 6, 1865—by some critical notes onHenry W. Kingsley's novel , "The Hillyars and the Bartons: A Story ofTwo Families," under the title , "The Noble School of Fiction," andthe name "Henry James" appears in the publisher's announced list ofcontributors to the early volumes. Many of these papers which firstappeared in The Nation have been reprinted, but few readers at thisdistance can realize how much the esteem in which that journal wasimmediately held under the editorial supervision of Mr. Godkin was dueto perhaps its youngest regular contributor.
Volumes of the collected critical papers have alreadyappeared ,—French Poets and Novelists, London: 1878, and PartialPortraits, London: 1888, are the more notable,—but by far the greaterpart of these contemporary Essays on the literature of the late sixtiesand the seventies are now almost lost in the files of old or extinctperiodicals.
We are accustomed these later years to think of Mr. James as novelistrather than literary essayist and he has been cited by a recent writeras an author of fiction who becomes a critic on occasion and, he alsoadds, that his analytical system of novel writing excellently fits himfor the office of critic; but, on the contrary, the papers in thisvolume seem to show that his early self-training as a critic has beenthe preparation for the creation of his characters in fiction.
The true lover of Mr. James's work feels the same delightful sense ofintimate discovery in touching these early papers that an artist does infinding a portfolio of early sketches by a beloved master whosedeveloped power and strength is known to him. There is the recognitionof the characteristic touch even here—the insight, the thought within athought, (more lately the despair of privileged psychologic athletes),the mystery of seeing—not what is apparent to the outward eye but whatwe fancied we concealed successfully within our inmost selves. There isthe extraordinary sense of his having put on paper what we reallythought—what we now think—that gives us more faith than ever in ourartist who is expression for us who feel, but who are yet dumb.
LE ROY PHILLIPS.
Boston, April 10, 1908.
The Novels of George Eliot
*
Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly , October, 1866.
This essay was written in 1866 before Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda had appeared. The former work was published in 1871-72 and the latter book in 1876. It was afterwards discussed at length by Mr. James in "Daniel Deronda: a Conversation," originally contributed to the Atlantic Monthly , December, 1876, and reprinted in 1888 in Partial Portraits .
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE ELIOT
The critic's first duty in the presence of anauthor's collective works is to seek out somekey to his method, some utterance of his literaryconvictions, some indication of his ruling theory.The amount of labour involved in an inquiry ofthis kind will depend very much upon the author.In some cases the critic will find express declarations;in other cases he will have to content himselfwith conscientious inductions. In a writer so fondof digressions as George Eliot, he has reason toexpect that broad evidences of artistic faith willnot be wanting. He finds in Adam Bede the followingpassage:—
"Paint us an angel if you can, with a floatingviolet robe and a face paled by the celestial light;paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mildface upward, and opening her arms to welcome thedivine glory; but do not impose on us any æstheticrules which shall banish from the region of artthose old women scraping carrots with their work-wornhands,—those heavy clowns taking holidayin a dingy pot-house,—those rounded backs andstupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over thespade and done the rough work of the world,—thosehomes with their tin cans, their brownpitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters ofonions. In this world there are so many of thesecommon, coarse people, who have no picturesque,sentimental wretchedness. It is so needful weshould remember their existence, else we may happento leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy,and frame lofty theories which only fita world of extremes....
"There are few prophets in the world,—few sublimelybeautiful women,—few heroes. I can'tafford to give all my love and reverence to suchrarities; I want a great deal of those feelings formy every-day fellowmen, especially for the fewin the foreground of the great multitude, whosefaces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom Ihave to make way with kindly courtesy....
"I herewith discharge my conscience," our authorcontinues, "and declare that I have had quiteenthusiastic movements of admiration toward oldgentlemen who spoke the worst English, who wereoccasionally fretful in their temper, and who hadnever moved in a higher sphere of influence thanthat of parish overseer; and that the way in whichI have come to the conclusion that human natureis loveable—the way I have learnt something ofits deep pathos, its sublime mysteries—has beenby living a great deal among people more or lesscommonplace and vulgar, of whom you would perhapshear nothing very surprising if you were toinquire about them in the neighbourhoods wherethey dwelt."
But even in the absence of any such avowedpr