ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I first read The Portrait of a Lady during the fall of 1977, in a class at Amherst College taught by John Cameron. He did not often let himself refer to James’s biography, still less to the details of the novel’s publication. But I learned most of what I know about the rhetoric of fiction from him and from my other teachers at Amherst, and my education there sits in judgment on each sentence I write.
A fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation made it possible for me to spend the academic year 2007–08 at work on this book’s opening chapters. Smith College has been characteristically generous with sabbatical leave, travel grants, and other research funds, and I am grateful to the provost’s office and in particular to Susie Bourque for that material support. Earlier, a grant from the Mellon-8 Consortium administered by Smith encouraged me to spend a summer putting together a detailed proposal, a narrative of what I wanted this book to do. And at the other end, I finished this book in Paris, where Columbia University’s Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall graciously provided me with an office.
My agent, Steve Wasserman, found me the perfect editor in Bob Weil. Bob pushed me into paradox, pushed me to be at once tighter and yet more expansive, and my every page is stronger because of his work on it. At
W. W. Norton and now Liveright I am indebted as well to Drake McFeely, Phil Marino, Peter Miller, Will Menaker, Devon Zahn, and Fred Wiemer.
Christopher Benfey, Ruth Bernard Yeazell, and David McWhirter read the entirety of the manuscript and saved me from many mistakes. Several colleagues at Smith deserve special thanks: Rick Millington and Michael Thurston served as my guides to the American nineteenth century; Nancy Mason Bradbury did the same thing in a far more literal way in Florence. I owe a particular debt to Greg Zacharias and Pierre Walker for making available the transcripts of James’s unpublished letters from 1880 and 1881. Many other people had the generosity to answer my questions; my gratitude to John Auchard, Michael Anesko, John Pemble, David Ball, Philip Horne, Cornelia Pearsall, Fred Kaplan, Larzer Ziff, James Shapiro, Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Franco Zabagli, Sara Philo, Sheldon Novick, Lyndall Gordon, Carol Osborne, Paul Saint-Amour, David J. Supino, and Joseph Donohue. Sir Julian Rose arranged for my visit to Hardwick; Piers Plowden and Francesca Rowan, the current tenants of Lamb House, allowed me a glimpse of James’s bedroom and upstairs study.
Yale’s Beinecke Library and Harvard’s Houghton Library allowed me to use their holdings. At Smith I am grateful to Karen Kukil and Martin Antonetti of the Mortimer Rare Book Room, while Susan Barker in the College archives and Henriette Kets de Vries at our superb museum gave me their help with the photographs. Catharina Gress-Wright and Stephanie Friedman, my undergraduate research assistants, have worked with skill and care.
Most rigorous of critics and best of traveling companions, Brigitte Buettner has had to listen to far too much about Henry James for far too long. Our daughter Miriam has yet to read a word of him. But she did enjoy the garden at the Lamb House.
INDEX
Abolitionism, 17, 18, 99, 126, 209
Acton, Lord, 61
Adam Bede (Eliot), 57, 64–65, 195, 216
Adams, Clover Hooper, 40–42, 102, 143, 148, 258, 259
Adams, Henry, 40–41, 98, 102, 139, 143, 148, 149, 244, 258, 259
Adams, John, 115
Adriatic Sea, 166, 172
adultery, 90, 199, 303, 326–27
in Gustave Flaubert, 68, 195, 303
Aeneid (Virgil), 231
aestheticism, 83, 84, 138
Agassiz, Louis, 18
Age of Innocence, The (Wharton), 91, 149, 206–7
Albany, N.Y., 321
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 166, 173, 208
Alexander, George, 289–91
Allied powers, 323
Alps, 33, 101
American Academy, Rome, 319
American exceptionalism, 36, 114–15, 278
American literature, 17
British reaction against, 244–49, 267
future of,
I first read The Portrait of a Lady during the fall of 1977, in a class at Amherst College taught by John Cameron. He did not often let himself refer to James’s biography, still less to the details of the novel’s publication. But I learned most of what I know about the rhetoric of fiction from him and from my other teachers at Amherst, and my education there sits in judgment on each sentence I write.
A fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation made it possible for me to spend the academic year 2007–08 at work on this book’s opening chapters. Smith College has been characteristically generous with sabbatical leave, travel grants, and other research funds, and I am grateful to the provost’s office and in particular to Susie Bourque for that material support. Earlier, a grant from the Mellon-8 Consortium administered by Smith encouraged me to spend a summer putting together a detailed proposal, a narrative of what I wanted this book to do. And at the other end, I finished this book in Paris, where Columbia University’s Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall graciously provided me with an office.
My agent, Steve Wasserman, found me the perfect editor in Bob Weil. Bob pushed me into paradox, pushed me to be at once tighter and yet more expansive, and my every page is stronger because of his work on it. At
W. W. Norton and now Liveright I am indebted as well to Drake McFeely, Phil Marino, Peter Miller, Will Menaker, Devon Zahn, and Fred Wiemer.
Christopher Benfey, Ruth Bernard Yeazell, and David McWhirter read the entirety of the manuscript and saved me from many mistakes. Several colleagues at Smith deserve special thanks: Rick Millington and Michael Thurston served as my guides to the American nineteenth century; Nancy Mason Bradbury did the same thing in a far more literal way in Florence. I owe a particular debt to Greg Zacharias and Pierre Walker for making available the transcripts of James’s unpublished letters from 1880 and 1881. Many other people had the generosity to answer my questions; my gratitude to John Auchard, Michael Anesko, John Pemble, David Ball, Philip Horne, Cornelia Pearsall, Fred Kaplan, Larzer Ziff, James Shapiro, Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Franco Zabagli, Sara Philo, Sheldon Novick, Lyndall Gordon, Carol Osborne, Paul Saint-Amour, David J. Supino, and Joseph Donohue. Sir Julian Rose arranged for my visit to Hardwick; Piers Plowden and Francesca Rowan, the current tenants of Lamb House, allowed me a glimpse of James’s bedroom and upstairs study.
Yale’s Beinecke Library and Harvard’s Houghton Library allowed me to use their holdings. At Smith I am grateful to Karen Kukil and Martin Antonetti of the Mortimer Rare Book Room, while Susan Barker in the College archives and Henriette Kets de Vries at our superb museum gave me their help with the photographs. Catharina Gress-Wright and Stephanie Friedman, my undergraduate research assistants, have worked with skill and care.
Most rigorous of critics and best of traveling companions, Brigitte Buettner has had to listen to far too much about Henry James for far too long. Our daughter Miriam has yet to read a word of him. But she did enjoy the garden at the Lamb House.
INDEX
Abolitionism, 17, 18, 99, 126, 209
Acton, Lord, 61
Adam Bede (Eliot), 57, 64–65, 195, 216
Adams, Clover Hooper, 40–42, 102, 143, 148, 258, 259
Adams, Henry, 40–41, 98, 102, 139, 143, 148, 149, 244, 258, 259
Adams, John, 115
Adriatic Sea, 166, 172
adultery, 90, 199, 303, 326–27
in Gustave Flaubert, 68, 195, 303
Aeneid (Virgil), 231
aestheticism, 83, 84, 138
Agassiz, Louis, 18
Age of Innocence, The (Wharton), 91, 149, 206–7
Albany, N.Y., 321
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 166, 173, 208
Alexander, George, 289–91
Allied powers, 323
Alps, 33, 101
American Academy, Rome, 319
American exceptionalism, 36, 114–15, 278
American literature, 17
British reaction against, 244–49, 267
future of,
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