The Complete Notebooks of Henry James: The Authoritative and Definitive Edition

About this book

The Complete Notebooks of Henry James opens a wide clear window into the private workshop of Americas master novelist the architect of modernism in fiction. It is a volume that deserves to be called definitive. Assembled and edited by Leon Edel Jamess much-acclaimed prizewinning biographer and Lyall H. Powers critic and editor of Jamess letters to Edith Wharton this book includes the nine scribbler-notebooks that were published by Oxford in 1947; these have been considerably updated and annotated to correct the identification of stories developed by James from his various notes and to reveal many noted Victorians James concealed through use of their initials. Certain omitted portions of the notebooks have also been restored. This volume is especially noteworthy for the body of new material that it contains. It includes a series of Jamess pocket diaries in which amid appointments and luncheon dates he jotted down observations and ideas for his fiction and commented on his personal relations. Also here are some fugitive dictated notes in which James offered an autobiographcial meditation on the "turning Point in his life and the "working out" of a story based on a passion murder by an American acquaintance in the south of France. Jamess long out-of-print statements for his unfinished novels The Ivory Tower and The Sense of the Past scenarios for unfinished plays the writers deathbed dictation--all these are here as well. An appendix includes a substantial fragment of a story James never completed and the book even provides insight into Jamess "cash accounts." Everywhere throughout the collection in writings never intended for the public eye the artist is seen at work. his private prayers to his Muse and exhortations to himself make exhilarating reading.