The Prefaces of Henry James

The first decade of the twentieth century saw Henry James at work selecting and revising his novels and tales for a collection of his work known as the New York Edition. James not only made extensive revisions of his early works; he added eighteen prefaces that provide what many readers believe to be the best commentary on his fiction. John Pearson argues here for a reading of the prefaces within the context of the New York Edition as James's attempt to construct an ideal reader, one attentive to his art and authorial performance.

Throughout his discussion of the eighteen prefaces, Pearson examines the strategies that James implements for preparing the reader for the prefaced texts. He argues that James sought to create the modern reader, one who would learn to appreciate and discriminate his literary art through reading the prefaces. By demonstrating that the prefaces frame the novels and tales in aesthetic histories that are authorized and authenticated by the author-historian's personal memory, Pearson accomplishes his analysis of James's use of the frame and how it systematically instructed the reader in the Jamesian aesthetic of fiction. Through close readings of several of the novels and tales including The Awkward Age, What Maisie Knew, The Portrait of a Lady, The Aspern Papers, and The Wings of the Dove, Pearson's comprehensive study examines the various framing strategies at work and considers the broader theoretical implications of reading through the prefaces.

Pearson's eclectic theoretical approach, similar to the recent poststructural work of John Carlos Rowe, makes a complex argument accessible to an educated reader untutored in recent poststructural literary theory.

“John Pearson has written an insightful and well-documented analysis which every James scholar will have to read but which may also be of great interest to scholars interested in the history of fictional theory and the role Jamesian aesthetics played in the development of that theory.”—English Studies

“Pearson’s work is a significant contribution to James studies and to the larger project of mapping the history of early modern literature. . . . He is right on target when he argues for a reading of the prefaces within the context of the edition as authorial performance—which is to say, within the context of the ’semiotic field’ in which they originally appeared.”—David McWhirter, Texas A & M University-College Station

John H. Pearson is Associate Professor of English at Stetson University.

History

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Literary Studies

           American Literature

           Literary Theory & Criticism