VIEWS AND REVIEWS

VIEWS
AND REVIEWS
BY
HENRY JAMES

NOW FIRST COLLECTED

INTRODUCTION BY
LE ROY PHILLIPS
COMPILER OF
"A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS
OF HENRY JAMES"






BOSTON
THE BALL PUBLISHING COMPANY
1908





Copyright, 1908
BY THE BALL PUBLISHING CO.

INTRODUCTION

Those whose palates are accustomed to the subtle flavours of the winesof the Rhine and Moselle can smack their lips and name the vintage atthe first taste. Likewise any one fairly familiar with the work of Mr.James during his forty years of literary activity can, after the readingof a single page taken at random, judge with a remarkable accuracy thedate of its composition. Yet the transition has not been abrupt and thestyles of writing which the author has adopted, early, middle and late,have blended in such a way that he has been bringing many of his earlierreaders, though some have fallen by the wayside, along with him to agenuine appreciation of his present work.

It is not unnatural but disappointing that those of the presentgeneration who chance to meet Mr. James in one of the later novels arenot as likely to seek a second volume as those who read Daisy Millersome thirty years ago when that study first appeared, so fresh in itsnote of charm and pathos, in the now almost unfindable brown wrappersof Harper's Half Hour Series, for they may forever miss a rareenjoyment.

In the critical papers which make up the contents of this book, thecharacteristics of the author's later style are wholly absent. Withoutthe date of the original appearance of these essays in periodical formbeing indicated, the chronological setting of this work is apparent. Nosentences with marvelously intricate complications of construction andwith expressions involved are in the author's method at this time, whilefor clearness and charm these views and reviews are admirable specimens,showing qualities which brought Mr. James his early readers and firstmade his name an essential feature of the announcements of publishers ofthe more discriminating periodicals forty years ago.

The earliest authenticated magazine article by Mr. James—printed whenhe was twenty-one—is a critical notice of Nassau W. Senior's Essays onFiction in The North American Review for October, 1864. From thistime until the appearance of his first volume—A Passionate Pilgrim andOther Tales, Boston: 1875—as many as one hundred and twenty-fiveserious literary notices contributed to periodicals can be traced tohim.

During this period it must also be remembered that Mr. James wasequally employed in writing short stories, art criticism and notes oftravel, both at home and abroad, and that these were also distinctivefeatures of the widely scattered journals in which they appeared.

In The North American Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Galaxy,Lippincott's Magazine, The New York Tribune, The Independent and someother periodicals, the authorship of such work was attributed to Mr.James on the publication of the articles or in regularly issuedindexes.

The articles in The Nation are seldom signed, and there is nopublished index showing the contributors to its files. In preparing arecent[*] Bibliography of the writings of Henry James I had access to arecord which the late Wendell Phillips Garrison, who was Mr. Godkin'sassociate from the founding of the paper and after 1881 editor in chargeuntil Ju