Henry James

Even during times of adversity within and beyond academe, scholarship on Henry James has continued to flourish, thanks to projects that confirm the enduring human interest of his life and works. The latest volume of The Complete Letters illuminates his literary success and his family relations, while a recent anthology sponsored by the European Society of Jamesian Studies presents duplicity not only as a moral and ethical failing but also as an inescapable condition of identity and language. In addition, historical critics explore numerous parallels between James’s world and our own. In a new book Miranda El-Rayess charts the author’s ambivalent responses to a growing consumer culture, and John Carlos Rowe has edited a collection—aptly titled Henry James Today— focused on current constructions of modernism and postmodernism. Most tellingly, perhaps, James’s writings suggest the perils and prospects of a future in which technology will continue to multiply global connections. A cluster of essays on the author’s late style (the subject of a special issue of the Henry James Review) underscores a paradox: an idiosyncratic signature, it also demonstrates his receptivity to other voices and media.