April 2025: Henry James

In April we will finally revisit Henry James (1843–1916).

Born in USA, he traveled extensively and ended his life as a British citizen after moving permanently to Europe in 1875 and returning to USA only for visits.

He is mostly known for his novels but he also wrote stories, plays and a series of memoirs and other non-fiction.

What do you plan to read in April?

PS: For technical reasons in LT, I am also linking Henry James, Jr. even if he never used that name, this is one of the places where the direct link works as LT has more than one Henry James :)

My plan is to read What Maisie Knew.

the only book of his I read was Washington Square, which I liked much better than the movie adaptation i saw. Not sure which one I will read yet

I don't get on his writing style. I struggled with The Turning of the Screw but managed to finish it, and the only other one of his I have finished was Washington Square. I might re-attempt In The Cage.

Just saw I also have The Ambassadors and The American, might try one of those.

>4 john257hopper: I know what you mean. Many years ago I found The Portrait of a Lady sheer torture, but a few years ago I did enjoy Washington Square. So I chose What Maisie Knew this time because it is a shorter one.

I will admit I struggled mightly with Henry James when much younger so I'm interested in seeing the recommendations. Will probably start with The Bostonians and maybe Washington Square.

I’ve read some Henry James—The Portrait of a Lady, The Golden Bowl, The American, Washington Square—and have a couple choices. I have a Norton Anthology of his novellas and may read one or two of those, or I may try to read The Wings of the Dove, which I doubt I’d be able to finish in April. Just now finishing Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge, a 600+ page feast, so am leaning toward the collection of novellas.

Last week at a library sale I found two smaller books: The Europeans, an early novella, and A Small Boy and Others, James's autobiography of his younger years, written at the end of his life. I will probably try to read these, along with What Maisie Knew, a novel from the middle of his career. It will be interesting to compare writing from the beginning, middle and end of his life.

I know I have a copy of The Bostonians somewhere, but it’s gone AWOL, and I won’t have time for The Wings of the Dove, as I will be travelling most of the month. But I have What Maisie knew on deck now...

I have read 3 James' in the past:
Portrait of a Lady 3 stars
The Turn of the Screw 2.5 stars
The Aspern Papers 4 stars

I just returned from a vacation and not sure I will have time for a James this month! However, I do have The Europeans and The Bostonians on my shelf.

>11 MissWatson: And it is done. Boy, this was a real slog. I don’t remember The Portrait of a Lady being this wordy, but maybe memory fails me here.
Anyway, I knew I was in trouble from the first page of James’s preface where he sets out his idea and his plan for the book like a sociological experiment. His convoluted sentences slowed me down so much that I started noticing his overuse of "but" and odd use of "so", usually in the sense of "so much" which I hadn’t come across before. And then his characters, all of them pretty unsympathetic. There’s no dialogue in the first chapters, just indirect speech, and I found this exhausting. Frankly, I also found this extremely boring.

>13 MissWatson: Well, thanks for confirming my memory of it from some 40 years ago.....

>13 MissWatson: this will be one to avoid for me, it seems. Life is too short and there are too many books to read.

I have attempted to read In the Cage again, some 14 years after my previous attempt. I got further this time, to around 40% of the way through but my tolerance for James's writing style has again been tested to the point of giving up. I see what he is trying to achieve in this story of a postal clerk's observations of her customers in 1890s London, but it just does not work for me. That is probably it for me with this author, frankly.

The Europeans, a short novel, first published in 4 parts from July to October, 1878 in The Atlantic Monthly

Set in the 1840s, Baroness Eugenia Munster is about to have her marriage annulled for political reasons, so she and her younger brother Felix Young, a happy-go-lucky and sometime artist, decide to visit their American cousins in Boston with an eye to securing an eligible (i.e., wealthy) match for the Baroness. Although their parents were Americans, Felix & Eugenia were born and raised in Europe and have lived in various locations. Mr Wentworth, a widower, and his 3 children, Gertrude, Charlotte and Clifford, are true born & bred New England Puritans. The novel explores the different value systems of the two families, both positive and negative.

I found the beginning long narrative passages of the book rather a slog, but as more of the story unfolds and dialogue takes over, I found the novel more accessible. Sometimes the dialogue felt a bit cryptic, and I wonder if this would have worked better as a play, where the actors could give more meaning to some of the lines. In fact one of the last scenes in the book was very drama-like: nearly all the main characters slowly gather in Mr Wentworth's study, where everyone's fate is resolved. Overall, not bad, but not exactly memorable.

The cover of my copy of A Small Boy and Others: Henry James, age 11, with his father Henry.
Detail from a daguerreotype taken in 1854 by Matthew Brady.

I've started this memoir of Henry's early years, which he wrote in 1913 after the death of his elder brother William. It's almost as impenetrable as his fiction, but I'm going to give it my best. It's clear from the beginning that he admired William, who he considered the genius of the family, while Henry considered himself a mediocre scholar at best.

I finished The Spoils of Poynton (1896), a novel from the middle of James' life.

This is a short novel focusing on only 3 characters. Mrs Gereth is a widow who has spent her life collecting beautiful and rare furniture, art and objects for her country home, Poynton. Under the terms of her husband's will, both Poynton and all the objects in it belong to her son, Owen. Owen is about to be married to Mona and now wants to take over Poynton for his bride's sake. Mrs Gereth befriends Fleda Vetch, a young woman, who has similar tastes and appreciation of Mrs Gereth's home. The story revolves around the struggle over the contents of the home, but it's more about the power struggle between mother, son and Fleda, as she tries to be the intermediary between the two.

Overall this is an intriguing story: how our "things" become our life. James relentlessly pursues the psychological battles of the three. All this is interesting, but sometimes his wordiness just left me skimming sentences rather than reading them over and over again. This is one of his shorter novels and the dialogue was quite perceptive at times, and more accessible than the prose.

I'm still slowly making my way through A Small Boy and Other, his memoir of his early years.