Back Complete Stories 1874–1884

Henry James: Complete Stories 1874–1884

“Daisy Miller” | “Lady Barberina” | “The Author of ’Beltraffio’” | 16 other stories More

Edited by William L. Vance

“The great thing about Henry James is that he is always there to go back to, and when you do go back to him, he is better even than you remembered.”— Los Angeles Times Book Review

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

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In the years when he achieved his greatest success as a novelist, Henry James was also contributing stories prolifically to popular magazines. Stories collected in this Library of America volume (the second of five volumes of James’s stories) show James working out, in a more concise fictional laboratory, themes that appear in such novels of the period as The Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians. They include some of his most famous explorations of the international theme: “Daisy Miller,” the unforgettable portrayal of an innocent, headstrong American girl at odds with European mores, “An International Episode” and “Lady Barberina,” satirically probing tales of English aristocrats and the American marriage market, and “The Siege of London,” in which an American widow strives to work her way into English society.

In “A Bundle of Letters” and “The Point of View,” James makes a fascinating experimental use of the epistolary form. “Professor Fargo” presents an unusually bleak view of the darker side of American life, while “The Author of ‘Beltraffio’” offers a disturbing portrait of a fin-de-siècle novelist. Throughout, James wittily limns the demands and hidden struggles of social life, and hones his mastery of the unexpected resolution and the brilliantly framed moral portrait.

Adventurous in narrative technique, yet marked by precise observation rendered in quicksilver prose, the stories of James’s middle period present a breathtaking array of memorable characters and beguiling scenarios.

William L. Vance, volume editor, is professor of English at Boston University, and author of America’s Rome.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Henry James: Complete Stories 1874–1884 is kept in print by a gift from Jeanne Donovan Fisher to the Guardians of American Letters Fund, in memory of Richard B. Fisher.
Table of Contents

Professor Fargo
Eugene Pickering
Benvolio
Crawford’s Consistency
The Ghostly Rental
Four Meetings
Rose-Agathe
Daisy Miller: A Study
Longstaff’s Marriage
An International Episode
The Pension Beaurepas
The Diary of a Man of Fifty
A Bundle of Letters
The Point of View
The Siege of London
The Impressions of a Cousin
Lady Barberina
Pandora
The Author of “Beltraffio”

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ISBN: 978-1-88301163-5 941 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 106 Library of America Series

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