The Tales of Henry James Book

These nine tales represent the major dimensions of the short fiction James wrote in the course of thirty years. The individual texts are those of the first book version, and thus illustrate the development of Jame's prose style. From the brief "Brooksmith" to "The Aspern Papers," nearly a novel in length, these tales represent formal variations, varieties of point of view, and many of Jame's favorite subjects and themes - the international scene, problems encountered by writers and artists, the human being haunted by visible and invisible ghosts, the exposure of children in the adult world, tyranny in its many guises.

James was also a practicing critic throughout his career, and his essay "The Art of Fiction" is included in the section entitled "The Author on His Craft" as an early statement of principles he never abandoned. Pertinent passages from James's notebooks, often formulating the first ideas for individual tales, and from his prefaces to the New York Edition, giving his much later perspectives on them, appear in the same section.

Biographical and background essays by Katherine Anne Porter and Leon Edel, essays of general criticism by David Daiches, Jacques Barzun, F.O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, and Christof Wegelin, and interpretive criticism of individual stories by Philip Rahv, Carol Ohmann, Christof Wegelin, Wayne C. Booth, Mildred Hartsock, Earle Labor, Krishna Baldev Vaid, and Edwin H. Cady are followed by a selective bibliography.