Many critics of Henry James are aware that after he completed the arduous task of selecting his novels and tales for Scribner's or The New York Edition (1907–9), revising all the chosen texts and composing his dense theoretical Prefaces, James went on to write something important other than his now much interpreted travel memoirs and autobiographical volumes. In fact, he composed and published five final tales between March 1909 and April 1910 – “The Velvet Glove,” “Mora Montravers,” “Crapy Cornelia,” “The Bench of Desolation,” and “A Round of Visits”; then he quickly republished them in book form with a new title, The Finer Grain, in October 1910, and changed the order as follows: “The Velvet Glove,” “Mora Montravers,” “A Round of Visits,” “Crapy Cornelia,” and “The Bench of Desolation.” Because the New York Edition's Prefaces are generally regarded as a veritable apotheosis of James's lifelong artistry – even by those who now contextualize or else deconstruct them – the status of five final tales said to have just “missed” making The New York Edition seems at first a bit like that of five cabooses standing stationary on a track parallel to that of the enormous luxury train to which they might have been joined. Edward Wagenknecht's observation in this regard is the norm: “Since the publication of The New York Edition was completed in 1909,” he writes, “it was not possible to include any of them in that collection; they made their first appearance in book form in The Finer Grain (Scribner's, New York, and Methuen, London, 1910).”