Coming soon…
I’m a fan of Henry James’ work, and not having found a thorough web site that discusses his work, I decided to create one. While the premise of this blog – reading all of Henry’s fiction chronologically and commenting on it – may seem hubristic, I may be able to accomplish this over a period of a few years.
If you have any ideas about what you’d like to see (beyond my chronological reading and comments on the works and on Henry’s life), feel free to add a comment to this post.
I won’t start posting about Henry’s works right away; it may not be for a few months (I’m writing this on September 25) because of other commitments, and the need to organize a lot of stuff to get started. But until then, I’ll post occasional articles about Henry’s life, and any Henry James news I come across. If you’re a Henry James fan, add this site to your RSS reader, or bookmark it. If you’d like to join me in reading Henry James, I’ll be posting a chronology of Henry’s publications soon, showing the order in which I will read them.
Meanwhile, check out my Henry James Bibliography if you need some ideas about what to read.
I do have a question about reading James chronologically. Do you plan to read the novels first, and then read the short stories, or do you plan to mix them by date? You see, I have also been planning to read James in chronological order (hence my excitement at discovering your website!), and have just finished “Watch and Ward”. Yes, the Library of America collection, thanks to just one library here who has most of the LOA books. I will wait to read your thoughts about WAW, as very few of my acquaintances even know of the existence of Henry James. A sad comment on my social circle, but since leaving the university, and lazily following the least-demanding career path, I have only found a couple of people who have ever read James. Their assessment of his writing was negative, so my thoughts about this great author have largely been confined to me, myself, and I. Thank you for taking the time to set this up.
First, by chronological, I mean in order of publication. There may be periods where a short story was published at the same time as part of a novel in serial. I’ll work that out when I find one. But I plan to read story-story-novel-story etc. as close as possible the order of publication (because order of composition is probably harder to pin down).
As for Watch and Ward, I won’t say too much now, but even Henry doesn’t include it as a “novel”; I think it was in the New York Edition preface that he said Roderick Hudson was his first novel. In any case, Watch and Ward is very strange, almost creepy (and not creepy like Turn of the Screw).
As to people reading Henry James; I live in France, so they’re much rarer here. In addition, I live in a rural area. So finding anyone who’s heard of him is pretty difficult. On the Internet, you see his name here and there, but – which prompted me to set up this site, and attempt my experiment of the reading – there’s not a serious presence around him. Yet, he’s generally considered one of the great writers. Maybe fewer people read older works these days? I don’t know, but I hope enough Henry James fans will stop by here and share their thoughts.
I will agree with your brief comments about “Watch and Ward.” A very unsettling Pygmalion kind of story. Concerning James’ refusal to recognize WAW as his first novel, I’ve been forced to rely upon the Library of America for a complete James collection, as the local branch libraries do carry all of the LOA books. As listed in your bibliography, “Novels – 1871-1880″ does list WAW as his first novel, so that’s where I began. I don’t blame James for his feelings, I’ve only read “Portrait of a Lady”, “Roderick Hudson”, and “Turn of the Screw”, but WAW is clearly inferior. I can’t wait to re-read these, I’ll eagerly wait for further developments on your website. Yes, I do recognize the fact that you have a life apart from this!
Here’s what Henry said in the preface to the New York Edition version of Roderick Hudson, how he describes it as his first novel. (I certainly agree that the LoA should include Watch and Ward as his first novel, however; Henry can’t erase the past.)
“Roderick Hudson was my first attempt at a novel, a long fiction with a ‘complicated’ subject, and I recall again the quite uplifted sense with which my idea, such as it was, permitted me at last to put quite out to sea. I had but hugged the shore on sundry previous small occasions; bumping about, to acquire skill, in the shallow waters and sandy coves of the ‘short story’ and master as yet of no vessel constructed to carry a sail.”