The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1887-1888 - (Hardcover)

About the Book

This sixteenth installment in the complete collection of Henry James's letters records James's ongoing efforts to care for his sister, develop his work, strengthen his professional status, build friendships, engage timely political and economic issues, and maximize his income.

Book Synopsis

This first volume in The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1887-1888 contains 154 letters, of which 94 are published for the first time, written from early January to December 22, 1887. These letters mark Henry James's ongoing efforts to care for his sister, develop his work, strengthen his professional status, build friendships, engage timely political and economic issues, and maximize his income. James details work on "The Aspern Papers," Partial Portraits, and plans The Reverberator. This volume opens with James in the midst of a long sojourn in Italy and concludes with his inquiring about both the status of his essay to the American Copyright League and also the story "The Liar."

Review Quotes

"Michael Anesko and Gregory W. Zacharias's achievement amounts to a culmination; they have given us authoritative editions comprising all James's extant letters, complete with helpful contextual information."--Rafael Walker, Edith Wharton Review

"This is a great addition to libraries of all sorts, and it should be inspiration for writers to browse through some of these letters to find another writer's input on topics we all have to ponder."--Pennsylvania Literary Journal

"Michael Anesko's superb introduction to both volumes [The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1878-1880, volumes 1 and 2] places James's letters in these crucial years in the context of James's literary works and the broader social history in which they were produced. . . . These new volumes of The Complete Letters of Henry James deserve our admiration for their scholarly rigor and the teamwork required not only of the volume editors and Michael Anesko but also of the associate editors, editorial assistants, and advisory group of this monumental project. . . . These handsome volumes . . . [are] extraordinary resources."--John Carlos Rowe, Resource for American Literary Study

"Rippling through these letters are the first imaginative stirrings of one of the greatest fiction and travel writers in the language. [James] was also one of the most entertaining--and prolific--correspondents. . . . These are richly enthralling letters."--Peter Kemp, Sunday Times (London)

"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

"The textual editing of the letters is fantastically thorough, every blot, deletion, insertion, and misspelling being lucidly presented in the text itself and further described in endnotes to each letter; for the reader this evokes the dash and spontaneity of James's pen, and for the scholar it clarifies every possible ambiguity caused by that dash. . . . The letters themselves are so vivid, funny, and revealing that [the edition] is already indispensable."--Alan Hollinghurst, The Guardian

"The general public has been deprived of James's full epistolary record until now. . . . All the more reason to celebrate the present volumes, handsomely produced and extensively and intelligently annotated."--Peter Brooks, Bookforum

About the Author

Henry James (1843-1916) was an American author and literary critic. He wrote some two dozen novels, including The Portrait of a Lady and The Golden Bowl, and 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 of Henry James Framed: Material Representations of the Master (Nebraska, 2022), among others.

Greg W. Zacharias is a professor of English and the director of the Center for Henry James Studies at Creighton University. He is editor of the Henry James Review and of A Companion to Henry James.

Katie Sommer has been associate editor of the Complete Letters of Henry James series since 2007 and has worked on the Henry James letters project since 2001.

Sarah Wadsworth is a professor of English at Marquette University. She is the author of In the Company of Books: Literature and Its "Classes" in Nineteenth-Century America.