The Art of the Novel,

by Henry James

Book Overview

This collection of prefaces, originally written for the 1909 multi-volume New York Edition of Henry James's fiction, first appeared in book form in 1934 with an introduction by poet and critic R. P.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684150506
• ISBN13: 9780684150505
• Release Date: January 1937
• Publisher: Scribner
• Length: 348 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The master on his mastery

Richard Blackmur in his introduction to this volume tells us that most of these prefaces were written for the famed 'New York Edition of his works. According to Lubbock," The labour was atorment, a care, and a delight, as his letters and the Prefaces themselves amply show. The thinking and the writing were hard and full and critical to the point of exasperation; the purpose was high, the reference wide, and the terms of discourse had to be conceived and defined as successive need for them arose. He had to elucidate and appropriate for the critical intellect the substance and principle of his career as an artist, and he had to do this, such was the idiosyncracy of his mind-specifically, example following lucid example with the consistency of mathematicl equation, so that in the Poetics, if his premises were accepted his conclusions must be taken as inevitable." p. vii Blackmur says that criticism has never been more ambitious, or more useful. He cites James' definition of his task in his preface to 'Roderick Hudson'. "These notes represent over a considerable course the continuity of an artist's endeavor, the growth of the whole operative consciousness, and best of all, perhaps their own tendency to multiply , with the implication, thereby of a memory enriched'. Among the prefaces included are those to 'Roderick Hudson' ' What Maisie Knew' 'The Princess Cassamissima' 'The Spoils of Poynton' 'The Altar to the Dead' 'The Tragic Muse'' The Lesson of the Master' ' The Aspern Papers' 'The Awkward Age''The Portrait of a Lady' ' The American' James famous advice to the writer about ' trying to be one upon whom nothing is lost' certainly seems to apply to himself in his effort to understand and deepen the meaning of his own work both for himself and for his readers.