The Aspern Papers and Other Tales

PENGUIN CLASSICS

THE ASPERN PAPERS AND OTHER TALES

SERIES ADVISOR: PHILIP HORNE

HENRY JAMES was born in 1843 in Washington Place, New York, of Scottish and Irish ancestry. His father was a prominent theologian and philosopher and his elder brother, William, also became famous as a philosopher. James attended schools in New York and later in London, Paris and Geneva, before briefly entering the Law School at Harvard in 1862. In 1864 he began to contribute reviews and short stories to American journals. He visited Europe twice as an adult before moving to Paris in 1875, where he met Flaubert, Turgenev and other literary figures. However, after a year he moved to London, where he met with such success in society that he confessed to accepting 107 invitations in the winter of 1878–9 alone. In 1898 he left London and went to live at Lamb House, Rye, Sussex. Henry James became a naturalized British citizen in 1915, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1916, shortly before his death in February of that year.

In addition to many short stories, plays, books of criticism, biography and autobiography, and much travel writing, he wrote some twenty novels, the first of which, Watch and Ward, appeared serially in the Atlantic Monthly in 1871. His novella ‘Daisy Miller’ (1878) established him as a literary figure on both sides of the Atlantic. Other novels include Roderick Hudson (1875), The American (1877), The Europeans (1878), Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima (1886), The Tragic Muse (1890), The Spoils of Poynton (1897), What Maisie Knew (1897), The Awkward Age (1899), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904).

MICHAEL GORRA is Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English at Smith College and the author of Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece (2012), a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in biography. His earlier books include The English Novel at Mid-Century; After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie; and The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany, along with, as editor, The Portable Conrad and the Norton Critical Edition of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

PHILIP HORNE is a Professor of English at University College London. He is the author of Henry James and Revision: The New York Edition (1990); editor of Henry James: A Life in Letters (1999); and co-editor of Thorold Dickinson: A World of Film (2008). He has also edited Henry James, A London Life & The Reverberator; and for Penguin, Henry James, The Tragic Muse and The Portrait of a Lady, and Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist. He has written articles on Henry James, and on a wide range of other subjects, including telephones and literature, zombies and consumer culture, the films of Powell and Pressburger and Martin Scorsese, the texts of Emily Dickinson, the criticism of F. R. Leavis, poetic allusion in Victorian fiction, and Bob Dylan and the Mississippi Blues. He is a General Editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James.

Chronology

1843 15 April: Henry James born at 21 Washington Place in New York City, second of five children of Henry James (1811–82), speculative theologian and social thinker, whose strict entrepreneur father had amassed wealth estimated at $3 million, one of the top ten American fortunes of his time, and his wife Mary (1810–82), daughter of James Walsh, a New York cotton merchant of Scottish origin.

1843–5 Accompanies parents to Paris and London.

1845–7 James family returns to USA and settles in Albany, New York.

1847–55 Family settles in New York City; HJ taught by tutors and in private schools.

1855–8 Family travels in Europe: Geneva, London, Paris, Boulogne-sur-Mer. Returns to USA and settles in Newport, Rhode Island.

1859–60 Family in Europe again: HJ attends scientific school, then the Academy (later the University) in Geneva. Learns German in Bonn.

September 1860: Family returns to Newport. HJ makes friends with future critic T. S. Perry (who records that HJ ‘was continually writing stories, mainly of a romantic kind’) and artist John La Farge.

1861–3 Injures his back helping to extinguish a fire in Newport and is exempted from military service in American Civil War (1861–5).

Autumn 1862: Enters Harvard Law School for a term. Begins to send stories to magazines.

1864 February: First short story, ‘A Tragedy of Error’, published anonymously in Continental Monthly.

May: Family moves to 13 Ashburton Place, Boston, Massachusetts.

October: Unsigned review published in North American Review.

1865 March: First signed tale, ‘The Story of a Year’, appears in Atlantic Monthly. HJ’s criticism published in first number of the Nation (New York).

1866–8 Continues reviewing and writing stories.

Summer 1866: W. D. Howells, novelist, critic and influential editor, becomes a friend.

November 1866: Family moves to 20 Quincy Street, beside Harvard Yard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1869 Travels for his health to England, where he meets John Ruskin, William Morris, Charles Darwin and George Eliot; also visits Switzerland and Italy.

1870 March: Death in USA of his much-loved cousin Minny Temple.

May: HJ, still unwell, is reluctantly back in Cambridge.

1871 August–December: First short novel, Watch and Ward, serialized in Atlantic Monthly.

1872–4 Accompanies invalid sister Alice and aunt Catherine Walsh (‘Aunt Kate’) to Europe in May. Writes travel pieces for the Nation. Between October 1872 and September 1874 spends periods of time in Paris, Rome, Switzerland, Homburg and Italy without his family.

Spring 1874: Begins first long novel, Roderick Hudson, in Florence.

September 1874: Returns to USA.

1875 January: Publishes A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales, his first work to appear in book form. It is followed by Transatlantic Sketches (travel pieces) and then by Roderick Hudson in November. Spends six months in New York City (111 East 25th Street), then three in Cambridge.

11 November: Arrives at 29 rue de Luxembourg, Paris, as correspondent for the New York Tribune.

December: Begins new novel, The American.

1876 Meets Gustave Flaubert, Ivan Turgenev, Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant and Émile Zola.

December: Moves to London and settles at 3 Bolton Street, just off Piccadilly.

1877 Visits Paris, Florence and Rome.

May: The American is published.

1878 Meets William Gladstone, Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning.

February: Collection of essays, French Poets and Novelists, is the first book HJ publishes in London.

July: Novella ‘Daisy Miller’ serialized in The Cornhill Magazine; in November Harper’s publish it in the USA, establishing HJ’s reputation on both sides of the Atlantic.

September: Publishes novel The Europeans.

1879 December: Publishes novel Confidence and Hawthorne (critical study).

1880 December: Publishes novel Washington Square.

1881 October: Returns to USA; visits Cambridge.

November: Publishes novel The Portrait of a Lady.

1882 January: Death of mother. Visits New York and Washington, DC.

May: Travels back to England but returns to USA on death of father in December.

1883 Summer: Returns to London.

November: Fourteen-volume collected edition of fiction published by Macmillan.

December: Publishes Portraits of Places (travel writings).

1884 Sister Alice moves to London and settles near HJ.

September: Publishes A Little Tour in France (travel writings) and Tales of Three Cities; his important artistic statement ‘The Art of Fiction’ appears in Longman’s Magazine. Becomes a friend of R. L. Stevenson and Edmund Gosse. Writes to his American friend Grace Norton: ‘I shall never marry … I am both happy enough and miserable enough, as it is.’

1885–6 Publishes two serial novels, The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima.

6 March 1886: Moves into flat at 34 de Vere Gardens.

1887 Spring and summer: Visits Florence and Venice. Continues friendship (begun in 1880) with American novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson.

1888 Publishes novel The Reverberator, novella ‘The Aspern Papers’ and Partial Portraits (criticism).

1889 Collection of tales A London Life published.

1890 Novel The Tragic Muse published.

1891 HJ’s dramatization of The American has a short run in the provinces and London.

1892 February: Publishes The Lesson of the Master (story collection).

March: Death of Alice James in London.

1893 Three volumes of tales published: The Real Thing (March), The Private Life (June), The Wheel of Time (September).

1894 Deaths of Constance Fenimore Woolson and R. L. Stevenson.

1895 5 January: Play Guy Domville is greeted by boos and applause on its premiere at St James’s Theatre; HJ abandons playwriting for many years. Visits Ireland. Takes up cycling. May: Publishes a volume of tales, Terminations.

1896 Publishes novel The Other House and a volume of tales, Embarrassments (June).

1897 Two novels, The Spoils of Poynton and What Maisie Knew, published.

February: Starts dictating, due to wrist problems.

September: Takes lease on Lamb House, Rye, Sussex.

1898 June: Moves into Lamb House. Sussex neighbours include the writers Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells and Ford Madox Hueffer (Ford).

August: Publishes In the Cage (short novel).

October: ‘The Turn of the Screw’, ghost story included in The Two Magics, proves his most popular work since ‘Daisy Miller’.

1899 April: Novel The Awkward Age published.

August: Buys the freehold of Lamb House.

1900 Shaves off his beard.

August: Publishes collection of tales The Soft Side. Friendship with American novelist Edith Wharton develops.

1901 February: Publishes novel The Sacred Fount.

1902 August: Publishes novel The Wings of the Dove.

1903 February: Publishes collection of tales The Better Sort.

September: Publishes novel The Ambassadors.

October: Publishes biography William Wetmore Story and his Friends.

1904 August: Sails to USA, his first visit for twenty-one years. Travels to New England, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, the South, St Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

November: Publishes novel The Golden Bowl.

1905 January: Is President Theodore Roosevelt’s guest at the White House. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

July: Back in Lamb House, begins revising works for the New York Edition of The Novels and Tales of Henry James.

October: Publishes English Hours (travel essays).

1906–8 Selects, arranges, writes prefaces and has illustrations made for New York Edition (published 1907–9, twenty-four volumes).

1907 January: Publishes The American Scene (travel essays).

1908 March: Play The High Bid produced at Edinburgh.

1909 October: Publishes Italian Hours (travel essays). Health problems.

1910 August: Travels to USA with brother William, who dies a week after their return.

October: Publishes The Finer Grain (tales).

1911 August: Returns to England.

October: Publishes The Outcry (novel adapted from play). Begins work on autobiography.

1912 June: Receives honorary doctorate from Oxford University.

October: Takes flat at 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea; suffers from shingles.

1913 March: Publishes A Small Boy and Others (first volume of autobiography). Portrait painted by John Singer Sargent for seventieth birthday.

1914 March: Publishes Notes of a Son and Brother (second volume of autobiography).

August: Outbreak of First World War; HJ becomes passionately engaged with the British cause and helps Belgian refugees and wounded soldiers.

October: Publishes Notes on Novelists.

1915 Is made honorary president of the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps.

July: Becomes a British citizen. Writes essays about the war (collected in Within the Rim (1919)) and the Preface to Letters from America (1916) by the poet Rupert Brooke, who had died the previous year.

2 December: Suffers a stroke.

1916 Awarded the Order of Merit in New Year Honours.

28 February: Dies. After his funeral in Chelsea Old Church, his ashes are smuggled back to America by sister-in-law and buried in the family plot in Cambridge.

Philip Horne, 2008

Henry James