Collected Stories, Volume 2
Henry James
Language: English
Pages: 767
ISBN: 2:00272682
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Encompassing a period of almost fifty years, the stories of Henry James represent the most remarkable feat of sustained literary creation in modern times. For sheer richness, variety and intensity, they have no equal in fiction, enabling us to trace the evolution of a great writer in the finest detail. This collection reprints all the major stories together with many unfamiliar but equally intriguing pieces that illuminate their more celebrated companions.
Volume 2 takes us from “The Private Life” of 1892 to James’s last story, “A Round of Visits,” published in 1910. These are the magnificent works of James’s maturity—“The Death of the Lion,” “The Altar of the Dead,” “The Figure in the Carpet,” “The Turn of the Screw,” “In the Cage,” “The Beast in the Jungle,” and many others—in which the deepening darkness of the author’s life casts a tragic but heroic shadow on the themes of his youth.
Contents of Volume 2
The Private Life
The Real Thing
Owen Wingrave
The Middle Years
The Death of the Lion
The Coxon Fund
The Next Time
The Altar of the Dead
The Figure in the Carpet
The Turn of the Screw
In the Cage
The Real Right Thing
The Great Good Place
Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie
The Abasement of the Northmores
The Special Type
The Tone of Time
The Two Faces
The Beldonald Holbein
The Story in It
Flickerbridge
The Beast in the Jungle
The Papers
Fordham Castle
Julia Bride
The Jolly Corner
Crapy Cornelia
The Bench of Desolation
A Round of Visits
for the book. The daily balm meanwhile was in what one knew of the book – there were exquisite things to know; in the quiet monthly cheques from Blackport and in the deeper rose of Maud’s little preparations, which were as dainty, on their tiny scale, as if she had been a humming-bird building a nest. When at the end of three months her betrothed had fairly settled down to his correspondence – in which Mrs Highmore was the only person, so far as we could discover, disappointed, even she moreover
though she had herself put the question, she disclaimed the idea that an answer was urgent. There was time, she conveyed – which Lady Champer only desired to believe; a faith moreover somewhat shaken in the latter when the Prince entered her room the next day with the information that there was none – none at least to leave everything in the air. Lady Champer had not yet made up her mind as to which of these young persons she liked most to draw into confidence, nor as to whether she most inclined
herself with doing the thing quite, as she called it, off her own bat. She had copied so bravely so many brave things that she had at the end of her brush an extraordinary bag of tricks. She had always replied to me that such things were mere clever humbug, but mere clever humbug was what our client happened to want. The thing was to let her have it – one could trust her for the rest. And at the same time that I mused in this way I observed to myself that there was already something more than, as
dispersed groups only to find they had nothing to keep him quiet, came upon it as he turned a corner of the house – saw it seated there in all its state. It might be said that at Burbeck it was, like everything else, made the most of. It constituted immediately, with multiplied tables and glittering plate, with rugs and cushions and ices and fruit and wonderful porcelain and beautiful women, a scene of splendour, almost an incident of grand opera. One of the beautiful women might quite have been
enterprise. It marked none the less a prodigious thrill, a thrill that represented sudden dismay, no doubt, but also represented, and with the selfsame throb, the strangest, the most joyous, possibly the next minute almost the proudest, duplication of consciousness. ‘He has been dodging, retreating, hiding, but now, worked up to anger, he’ll fight!’ – this intense impression made a single mouthful, as it were, of terror and applause. But what was wondrous was that the applause, for the felt