Henry James : Collected Travel Writings : Great Britain and America : English Hours / The American Scene / Other Travels (Library of America) - Hardcover

James, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0940450763 ISBN 13: 9780940450769

Publisher: Library of America, 1993

Synopsis

Collected in this Library of America volume (and its companion) for the first time, Henry James’s travel books and essays display his distinctive charm and vivacity of style, his sensuous response to the beauty of place, and his penetrating, sometimes sardonically amusing analysis of national characteristics and customs. Observant, alert, imaginative, these works remain unsurpassed guides to the countries they describe, and they form an important part of James’s extraordinary achievement in literature.

This volume brings together James’s writing on Great Britain and America. The essays of English Hours (1905) convey the freshness of James’s “wonderments and judgments and emotions” on first encountering the country that became his adopted home for half a century. James includes the vivid account of a New Year’s weekend at a perfectly appointed country house, midsummer dog days in London, and the spectacle of the Derby at Epsom. Joseph Pennell’s delightful illustrations, which appeared in the original edition, are reprinted with James’s text.

In The American Scene (1907) James revisits his native country after a twenty-year absence, traveling throughout the eastern United States from Boston to Florida. James’s poignant rediscovery of what remained of the New York of his childhood (“the precious stretch of street between Washington Square and Fourteenth Street”) contrasts with his impression of the modern, commercial New York, a new city representing “a particular type of dauntless power.” Edmund Wilson, who praised The American Scene’s “magnificent solidity and brilliance,” remarked that “it was as if. . . his emotions had suddenly been given scope, his genius for expression liberated.”

Sixteen essays on traveling in England, Scotland, and America conclude this volume. The essays, most of which have never been collected, range from early pieces on London, Saratoga, and Newport, to articles on World War One that are among James’s final writings.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

About this title

From the Publisher:

The Library of America is an award-winning, nonprofit program dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as "the most important book-publishing project in the nation's history" (Newsweek), this acclaimed series is restoring America's literary heritage in "the finest-looking, longest-lasting edition ever made" (New Republic).

From the Back Cover:

This volume brings together James's writings on Great Britain and America. The essays of English Hours convey the freshness of James's "wonderments and judgments and emotions" on first encountering the country that became his adopted home for half a century. He captures the immensely varied life of London in a series of walks through that "murky, modern Babylon", which contains "the most romantic town-vistas in the world". Lively vignettes of a winter visit to an unfashionable watering place and excursions to the cathedral towns of Wells and Salisbury are followed by a haunting evocation of the desolate Suffolk coast at Dunwich. James includes vivid accounts of a New Year's weekend at a perfectly appointed country house, midsummer dog days in London, and the spectacle of the Derby at Epsom. In every essay he enriches his portrait of the English character, governed by social conventions and yet prone to startling eccentricities. Joseph Pennell's delightful illustrations, which appeared in the original 1905 edition, are reprinted with James's text. In The American Scene (1907) James revisits his native country after a twenty-year absence, traveling throughout the eastern United States from Boston to Florida. Views of the Hudson River arouse memories of his own past - the river "seemed to stretch back...to the earliest outlook of my consciousness", he writes. James's poignant rediscovery of what remained of the New York of his childhood ("the precious stretch of space between Washington Square and Fourteenth Street") contrasts with his impression of the modern, commercial New York, a new city representing "a particular type of dauntless power, ..crowned not only with no history, but with no credible possibility of time for history?" Edmund Wilson, who praised The American Scene's "magnificent solidity and brilliance", remarked that "it was as if...his emotions had suddenly been given scope, his genius for expression liberated". Sixteen essays on traveling in England, Scotland, and America conclude this volume. The essays, most of which have never before been collected, range from early pieces on London, Saratoga, and Newport, to articles on World War I that are among James's final writings.

About this edition

• Publisher: Library of America
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0940450763
• ISBN 13: 9780940450769
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 868
• Editor: Howard Richard