Special Author: Henry James
Q3139
Pam Thurschwell (p.thurschwell@sussex.ac.uk)
Office Hours TBA
VACATION READING ADVICE:
To prepare for the course over the summer you should read one or both of our first two large
novels, The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and The Ambassadors (1903). If you manage both consider
the points of continuity and the differences between them, as exemplars of James’s middle and
late style. For our very first class you will need to have read two short stories, “Daisy Miller”
(1878) and “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903).
NOTE ABOUT EDITIONS: Henry James rewrote his earlier works extensively for the New
York edition of his novels and short stories that came out 1907-1909 toward the end of his life.
Because of this you will find different editions of James’s works differ from each other
according to whether they follow his earlier book version, the New York edition rewrites, or the
initial publication version (his longer novels were often published in installments in journals).
You are in safe hands if you stick to the Oxford World’s Classics editions for your texts. They
will contain a note on the text that will let you know how they’ve chosen to edit James. You need
to be aware of which version of James you have, and you must purchase/or have in your hands in
class an edition of James’s novels that contain the preface that he wrote to each novel for the
New York Edition. These are weird and interesting texts in their own right and we will be
discussing them in class.
You might also want to dip into Leon Edel’s absorbing five volume biography of James. If
you’re in the Sussex area and looking for a day trip check out James’ house in Rye:
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-lambhouse
Rye is an absurdly adorable town, you’ll get a chance to get the feel for where James wrote many
of his late works, and you can see where his dog is buried.
Course Outline (dates to be filled in later. Some minor changes might occur.)
1) “Daisy Miller” (1878) and “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903) Introduction: What happens in
James? (What doesn’t happen in James?)
2) The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
3) The Ambassadors (1903)
4) The Ambassadors (1903)
5) Short Stories: We will discuss some, if not all, of the following: “The Figure in the Carpet”
(1896); “The Pupil” (1891); “The Jolly Corner” (1908); return to “The Beast in the Jungle”
(1903) plus Eve Sedgwick on “The Beast in the Closet”
6) James prefaces plus the beginning of The Bostonians (1886)
7) READING WEEK
8) The Bostonians (1886)
9) The Turn of the Screw (1898) and the first half of What Maisie Knew (1897)
10) What Maisie Knew (1897)
Optional: Sigmund Freud, Dora (1905) Secondary reading: Neil Hertz, “Dora’s Secrets, Freud’s
Techniques” in In Dora’s Case: Freud, Hysteria, Feminism (edited by Charles Bernheimer and
Claire Kahane)
11) The Aspern Papers (1888) and “The Figure in the Carpet” (1896)
12) James Review/In class essay writing clinic
Some Secondary Reading:
There will be a study direct site for this course. I will put extra articles, recommended and
required reading up there frequently.
For an in-depth biography of James go to Leon Edel.
Henry James: The Untried Years 1843–1870 by Leon Edel (1953)
------------ The Conquest of London 1870–1881 by Leon Edel (1962)
------------ The Middle Years 1882–1895 by Leon Edel (1962)
------------ The Treacherous Years 1895–1901 by Leon Edel (1969)
------------ The Master 1901–1916 by Leon Edel (1972)
For a fascinating selection of writings from his whole family see:
F. O. Matthiessen, The James Family: including Selections from the Writings of Henry James Sr,
William, Henry and Alice James (1947)
Contemporary reviews are great for understanding the context in which works are received:
Kevin J. Hayes, Henry James: The Contemporary Reviews (1996)
General collections:
Modern Critical Views: Henry James edited by Harold Bloom (1987)
A Companion to Henry James Studies edited by Daniel Mark Fogel (1993)
Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Ruth Yeazell (1994)
The Cambridge Companion to Henry James edited by Jonathan Freedman (1998)
*** (means I recommend this highly)
***Adrian Poole, Henry James (1991)
Jeremy Tambling, Henry James (2000)
***Sharon Cameron, Thinking in Henry James (1989)
***Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Language and Knowledge in the Late Novels of Henry James
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)
***White, Allon. The Uses of Obscurity: The Fiction of Early Modernism (1981)
John Carlos Rowe, The Other Henry James (1998)
Ross Posnock, The trial of curiosity: Henry James, William James and the Challenge of
Modernity (1991)
***Mark Seltzer, Henry James and the Art of Power (1984) Fascinating Foucauldian reading of
James.
***Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James (1991)
Edward Wagenknecht, The Tales of Henry James (1984)
Robert B Pippin, Henry James and modern moral life (2001)
Peter Collister, Writing the Self: Henry James and America (2007)
Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure (2002)
Pamela Thurschwell, Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880-1920 (2001) on In the
Cage and The Sense of the Past (if you want to know what I think)
James and the Literary Marketplace
***Jonathan Freedman, Professions of Taste: Henry James, British Aestheticism, and
Commodity Culture (1990).
Ross Posnock, The Trial of Curiosity: Henry James, William James and the Challenge of
Modernity (1991)
Michael Anesko, “Friction with the Market”: Henry James and the Profession of Authorship
(1986)
James and Sexuality
***Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990
***--- ‘Queer Performativity: Henry James’s The Art of the Novel’, GLQ 1 (1993), 1-16.
Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire edited by John R. Bradley (1999)
****Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality (1998)
Eric Haralson, Henry James and Queer Modernity (2002)
Leland S. Person, Henry James and the suspense of masculinity (2003)
Kevin Ohi, Henry James and the Queerness of Style (Minnesota 2011)
If you are interested in James’ contemporary legacy there has been a spate of recent novels
which either feature James as a character or are consciously Jamesian. The best, in my opinion,
are Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty (2004); Colm Toibin, The Master (2005); Cynthia
Ozick’s short story, ‘Dictation’ in Dictation (2008), and Michiel Heyns, The Typewriter’s Tale
(2005).