Complete Stories 1892-1898 (Library of America) [Hardcover]

Henry James (1843-1916) was nicknamed The Master by admiring fellow-authors towards the end of his life. He is truly a noble, gifted, psychological author depicting a by-gone era but including timeless insights about human beings and their general and mental situations in his writings. He is a master of lengthy prose (too lengthy for some!) These Library of America editions of James's writings are wonderful, high-quality, unabridged books with expert editing (notes) at the back of the volume. They have a knack for selecting the best editions of the author's writings where more than one version was published in the author's lifetime. The short stories of this volume are from the mature period but before James' final developed style of fictional writing. There are a large number of stories including many wonderful gems such as "Owen Wingrave," "The Coxon Fund" and "In the Cage." To be fair, most of the stories were written quickly for magazines, and a few ("Glasses" comes to mind) just aren't good stories at all, in my opinion. However, most of the stories do succeed quite well. "Owen Wingrave" (criticized by Bernard Shaw as being too deterministic and neglecting free will) is actually a penetrating tale about military culture, military values, and the role of the military in the nineteenth-century world. "The Coxon Fund" is about a brilliant lecturer supported by the fund but whose life and the lives of his supporters are full of pitfalls outside of the Fund's influence. The story shows how the successes and failures of the Fund (and the Lecturer) have subtle and not-so-subtle ramifications for each of the characters. With "In the Cage", the author steps outside of his accustomed higher-class and higher-educated mix of characters to present the plight of a penetrating lower-class telegram processor and her insights on life and her suitor. I found it a nice rendition of late-nineteenth century London. I encourage readers to explore this and other Library of America editions of James' writings.

During the 1890s, Henry James was a proper Englishman with special knowledge about the cousins on the other side of the water. Americans continue to crop up in the stories. So do ghosts. Several among the 21 stories in this volume 4 of LoA's edition of James stories have ghostly elements. HJ generally treads lightly in this field though, there is no cheap horror.

'Nona Vincent' is a story about a play and a platonic triangle between the writer, his lead actress, and his benefactress. There is a mild ghost element, or is it a dream? Very much tongue in cheek.
At the time of writing this story, HJ was himself trying to set foot on the stage as a playwright. He failed. He was not destined to be a stage star. Several of these stories are stagey.

'The Real Thing': a painter tells us of a couple whose mission in life is looking good for photos and paintings. Too bad for the couple that they are not good at it. This story might be considered funny, but HJ doesn't normally do Schadenfreude.

'The Private Life'. In a Swiss resort hotel a group of English tourists of the better sort meet 'by accident'. Funny, and a bit ghostly. We have a man who seems to exist in 2 permutations (the brilliant writer and the boring conversationalist) and another one who doesn't seem to exist at all, at times.

'Lord Beaupre', a comedy about the marriage hunt. The scheming mother gets upended by her son and daughter.
I find that HJ is at times entertaining even when he has nothing to say. One can still focus on the artful mischievous turn of the sentence.

'Sir Dominik Ferrand', in the line of the earlier master piece The Aspern Papers, about the privacy rights of dead celebrities. Aspiring young writer buys used desk and finds 27 compromising letters written by a historic person. What to do with the treasure? HJ is a protector of privacy.

'Collaboration', 'Owen Wingrave' , and 'The Wheel of Time' became a book together and I have reviewed it separately. An interesting but imperfect threesome.

Similarly, 'The Middle Years' was packaged with 'The Death of the Lion', 'The Coxon Fund', and 'The Altar of the Dead' as 'Terminations'. I was less than enchanted with these stories, which are overcrowded and lack pace and simplicity.

Then things look up again. The next 4 stories will be packaged together as 'Embarrassments' in 1896. They are fun. 'The Next Time' is a farcical tale around the question whether literary quality requires or maybe even guarantees lack of success. Quote: there are people who can't be vulgar for trying. Clearly about HJ himself.
'Glasses' is a portrait of a pretty and naive young woman, a gold-digger.
'The Figure in the Carpet' is a hoax of the kind found in the Aspern Papers.
'The Way It Came' is a sophisticated and subtle ghost story. Or is it a story of insane jealousy? We will never know.

Then comes the ghostly 'Turn of the Screw', a master piece of the genre. I have reviewed it separately.
Followed by 'Covering End', a long story, a comedy about the old subject, Brits and Americans. It reads like a stage play and it takes an effort to get into. Machinations about ownership of an old mansion. Not convincing at all, ponderous language not matching the lightweight content.

Finally 'In the Cage', another long story, about a woman who works in a telegraph office and who thinks about her customers' lives, based on the cables that cross her desk. Unusual for its working class setting, but not really convincing. Gissing would have done it better.

In summary, while there are some pearls in this collection, the overall impression is a little disappointing.

Despite the objections that readers may raise as to style (difficult, convoluted) and his sometimes limited subject matter, Henry James remains one of the Great American writers, and also one of the most prolific. The mountain of fiction James created is truly impressive and almost consistently interesting. Library of America has dedicated multiple volumes to James, excluding only (as far as I am aware) his "dramatic" efforts, which were by and large a failure, if not a disaster. Consistent with its approach, LoA has published all of James's short stories in 5 volumes, organized by date of composition/publication. The present volume covers 1892-98, a fertile period for James's short fiction, encompassing the final years of his theatrical efforts and somewhat before his most difficult final period (i.e, The Golden Bowl, and others). This volume includes a number of stories that should be in ANY compilation of James's stories, including The Turn of the Screw, The Real Thing, The Figure in the Carpet, In the Cage, and others. It also is interesting to note that, at this point in his career, James's stories increasingly were concerned with loss, mortality, and ruminations on the "legacy" of an artist, for example "Greville Fane," "The Middle Years," "The Death of the Lion," "The Alter of the Dead," and " The Figure in the Carpet." The volume is done with LoA's usual quality and is certainly a worthy publication. My only reservations are these. First, if you are looking for a volume that includes the "best" of James's stories, you don't specifically care about this "period," and you do not intend to collect or read all 5 LoA volumes of stories amounting to something like 4000 pages, you are probably better off with an anthology that covers all of James's writing career. Second, LoA has consistently followed a philosophy of letting the works speak for themselves, with little (if any) critical commentary or guidance, except for very good chronologies of the authors' lives. I certainly respect and understand this approach, and an interested reader can relatively easily acquire useful criticism or commentary from other sources. However, with James, perhaps more than some other LoA authors, some critical input would be quite valuable. For example, taking only The Turn of the Screw, the various interpretations are diverse and fascinating in their own right: is it a simple (relatively speaking) ghost story? Is the governess mentally unstable and the victim of repressed sexuality? It would go beyond the bounds of the LoA format fully to address these issues, but it might be useful if the volume at least gave the reader a "heads up" about the various interpretations and their sources.
With those small reservations, this is a very good volume and a good place to start if you are deeply interested in James's shorter fiction. If anyone happened to pick up this volume, or read this comment, looking for a thesis or paper topic, for what it is worth, you could do worse than to think about James's short fiction on the artist, mortality and the artist's legacy and take special note of the stories cited above.