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Landmarks of “The Terrible Town”: The New York Scene in Henry James' Last Stories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Extract
A tremendous amount of material has been written about the overpowering effect that America had on Henry James when he returned to this country in 1904 after twenty-years absence, which he discussed in The American Scene (1907). In particular, the effects of the New York scene, what James called the “terrible town,” are recorded in his New York Stories—“The Jolly Corner,” “Julia Bride,” “Crapy Cornelia,” and “A Round of Visits”—written between 1906 and 1909, and “The Married Son,” Chapter Seven from the composite novel, The Whole Family (1908).
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977
References
NOTES
1. James, Henry, The American Scene, with an introduction and notes by Leon Edel (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1968), p. 108Google Scholar. All future references to this book will be indicated in the body of the paper by the letter “A” plus page number.
2. James' work in the years following his return to England shows how American architecture was deeply enmeshed in his thinking about and in the writing of The American Scene and in his compilation of the New York Edition, a multi-volume collection of novels about Americans in Europe. The frontispiece for each volume of the New York Edition, selected from a group of photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn. depicted details from buildings, usually doors or portals. In addition, the row house, the portal to the Metropolitan Museum, and a group of New England houses were represented in a rather large proportion of the pictures (also by Coburn) used to illustrate the fiction selected even though most of the American stories had been eliminated.
3. The Complete Tales of Henry James, vol. 12, edited with an introduction by Edel, Leon (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincoti Company. 1964)Google Scholar. This volume includes all four New York stories discussed in this essay. All future references to this book will be indicated in the body of the paper by a page number.
4. James, Henry, “The Married Son” in The Whole Family, a novel by twelve authors. (New York: Harper and Bros., 1908), pp. 144–84Google Scholar. Future references to this novel will be indicated by the letter “W” plus page number.
5. Edel, Leon, Henry James: The Master (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1972), p. 263.Google Scholar
6. Bell, Millicent, Edith Wharton and Henry James (New York: George Braziller, 1965), p. 52.Google Scholar
7. Ibid., p. 245.