Gathers James essays about fiction, literary criticism, and the works of Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Howells, Stowe, Arnold, Browning, Byron, Trollope, and Stevenson

Product Description: The texts of "A London Life" and "The Reverberator", both serialized in 1888, are presented here with a new introduction, notes and lists of variant readings by Philip Horne. With these two short novels Henry James exposes the motives of those who propagate scandal and others who try to suppress it...read more

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Product Description: The playwright's unremitting quest for a modern form of trgedy led him to a bold mixture of genres in this play, which has been hailed as one of the forerunners of modern tragicomedy. The title of the play, usually translated as "The Changlings", refers to the all-important mechanism which provides the drama with it's happy conclusion: the decietful interchange of two pairs of children in their infancy...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

A collection of 296 fully annotated letters, including more than one hundred previously unpublished works, follows the life and literary career of one of the world's leading writers, from his first publication in 1864 to his death in 1916, as he corresponded with H. G. Wells, Edith Wharton, and Robert Louis Stevenson, among other notables. (view table of contents)

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A narrow grave-yard in the heart of a bustling, indifferent city, seen from the windows of a gloomy-looking inn, is at no time an object of enlivening suggestion; and the spectacle is not at its best when the mouldy tombstones and funereal umbrage have received the ineffectual refreshment of a dull, moist snow-fall. If, while the air is thickened by this frosty drizzle, the calendar should happen to indicate that the blessed vernal season is already six weeks old, it will be admitted that no depressing influence is absent from the scene. This fact was keenly felt on a certain 12th of May, upwards of thirty years since, by a lady who stood looking out of one of the windows of the best hotel in the ancient city of Boston. She had stood there for half an hour—stood there, that is, at intervals; for from time to time she turned back into the room and measured its length with a restless step. In the chimney-place was a red-hot fire which emitted a small blue flame; and in front of the fire, at a table, sat a young man who was busily plying a pencil. He had a number of sheets of paper cut into small equal squares, and he was apparently covering them with pictorial designs—strange-looking figures. He worked rapidly and attentively, sometimes threw back his head and held out his drawing at arm's-length, and kept up a soft, gay-sounding humming and whistling. The lady brushed past him in her walk; her much-trimmed skirts were voluminous. She never dropped her eyes upon his work; she only turned them, occasionally, as she passed, to a mirror suspended above the toilet-table on the other side of the room. Here she paused a moment, gave a pinch to her waist with her two hands, or raised these members—they were very plump and pretty—to the multifold braids of her hair, with a movement half caressing, half corrective. An attentive observer might have fancied that during these periods of desultory self-inspection her face forgot its melancholy; but as soon as she neared the window again it began to proclaim that she was a very ill-pleased woman. And indeed, in what met her eyes there was little to be pleased with. The window-panes were battered by the sleet; the head-stones in the grave-yard beneath seemed to be holding themselves askance to keep it out of their faces.

The Ambassadors