The Complete Notebooks of Henry James opens a wide, clear window into the private workshop of America's master novelist, the architect of modernism in fiction. It is a volume that deserves to be called definitive. Assembled and edited by Leon Edel, James' much-acclaimed prizewinning biographer, and Lyall H. Powers, critic and editor of James' 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 thru 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 James' 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. James' long out-of-print statements for his unfinished novels The Ivory Tower and The Sense of the Past, scenarios for unfinished plays, the writer's deathbed dictation—all these are here as well. An appendix includes a substantial fragment of a story James never completed. The book even provides insight into James' "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.
Author
Henry James, OM (1843-1916), son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an American-born author, one of the founders and leaders of a school of realism in fiction. He spent much of his life in England and became a British subject shortly before his death. He is primarily known for a series of major novels in which he portrayed the encounter of America with Europe. His plots centered on personal relationships, the proper exercise of power in such relationships, and other moral questions. His method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allowed him to explore the phenomena of consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting. James insisted that writers in Great Britain and America should be allowed the greatest freedom possible in presenting their view of the world, as French authors were. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable narrators in his own novels and tales brought a new depth and interest to realistic fiction, and foreshadowed the modernist work of the twentieth century. An extraordinarily productive writer, in addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books of travel writing, biography, autobiography, and criticism,and wrote plays, some of which were performed during his lifetime with moderate success. His theatrical work is thought to have profoundly influenced his later novels and tales.
