Leon Edel Book order (chronological)

Henry James was arguably the greatest practitioner of what has been called the psychological ghost story. This edition includes all ten of his tales in this genre.

This is the one-volume edition of a famous biography of Henry James, which includes new material. Born in America, Henry James was educated both there and in Europe before settling in London, where he was to spend most of his life, in 1876. His novels represent the culmination of the 19th-century realist tradition of Austen, George Eliot, Flauberty and Balzac, and a decisive step towards the experimental modernism of Woolf and T.S. Eliot. His works often focus upon an innocent American in Europe, and assess the qualities and dangers of both American and European culture at the time, as well as showing their vast differences.

A delightful period piece of Paris in the late 1880’s, We’ll to the Woods No More ( Les lauriers sont coupés ) retains its importance as the first use of the monologue intérieur and the inspiration for the stream-of-consciousness technique perfected by James Joyce. Dujardin’s charming tale, told with insight and irony, recounts what goes on in the mind of a young man-about-town in love with a Parisian actress. Mallarmé described the poetry of the telling as "the instant seized by the throat." Originally published in France in 1887, the first English translation (by Joyce scholar Stuart Gilbert) was published by New Directions in 1938. In 1957 Leon Edel’s perceptive historical essay reintroduced the book as "the rare and beautiful case of a minor work which launched a major movement."

The Complete Notebooks of Henry James opens a clear window into the private workshop of America's master novelist. Leon Edel, James' highly-acclaimed award-winning biographer, and Lyall H. Powers, critic and editor of James' letters to Edith Wharton, have assembled and edited thisdefinitive volume.It contains the nine scribbler-notebooks originally published by Oxford in 1947, with considerable updating and annotations that both correct the identification of stories developed by James from his various notes and reveal many noted Victorians whom he concealed through the use of initials.Edel and Powers have also restored certain previously omitted portions of the notebooks, as well as including over 20,000 words of new material. This new material consists of a series of James' pocket diaries in which, amid appointments and luncheon dates, he jotted down observations and ideas forhis fiction and commented on his personal relations. They also provide some fugitive dictated notes, in which James offered an autobiographical meditation on the "turning point" in his life and the "working out" of a story based on a passion murder by an American aquaintance in the south of France.That's not all; Edel and Powers also give us James' long out-of-print statements for his unfinished novels The Ivory Tower and The Sense of the Past , scenarios for unfinished plays, notes on his "cash accounts," and the writer's deathbed dictation, as well as a long outline of The Ambassadorsand jacket cover notes now identified as James' own writing. An appendix provides a substantial, and previously unpublished, fragment of Hugh Merrow , a story he never completed. Through all these collected writings never intended for the public eye, we see the artist at work. His private prayersto his Muse and exhortations to himself make for exhilarating reading.

Avon paperback. 1979. Crease at lower corner of front cover, otherwise fine. Same day shipping. Seller guarantees complete satisfaction.