. . . . . . . . . . . the Henry James scholar's Guide to Web Sites

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James

This site was selected by The New York Times "Browser" column as one of five recommended Web sites for the week of January 27, 2000.

  • Beesker.com on Henry James - Beesker purports to "provide an independent and professional selection of the world's best websites, including the best websites for buying..." The hundreds of selections go from "Aardvarks" to "Zippers" and include "Henry James" and "William Shakespeare" along the way. Beesker is financed only by Google Adsense advertisements; no payment is accepted from the selected websites.

    NEW: *The Henry James E-Journal, Number 17: "More Than a 'Player': James Brand Pinker and the Literary Estate of Henry James" - by Kerry Sutherland. The role of Henry James's literary agent in arranging for the posthumous publications. New information, based on many manuscript sources.

  • ETEXTS at State University of New York, New Paltz

    • A Hyper-Concordance to the Henry James etexts at New Paltz - Concordance provided by Mitsuharu Matsuoka and Masahiro Komatsu of Nagoya University.
      NOTE: After clicking on a line number in the list of "hits," be patient if nothing seems to be happening. It may take a while for the complete text of a long novel to be downloaded so that you can navigate in all of it. Also note that after you get a list of "hits," you must use the mouse to raise the horizontal lines (borders) to enlarge the window at the bottom, which contains the text of the story or novel.
      Concordances for many authors besides Henry James can be accessed from the drop-down list of authors. Clicking on "home" will make available many on-line resources for Victorian literature.

    • The Golden Bowl - with hypertext links (html) - complete text of the New York Edition of 1909 - A menu of 135 thematic phrases, classified into twelve categories, invites jumps to the phrases' contexts in the novel. For the complete novel without hypertext links, more suitable for printing and editing, page down to the version in the section "Longer works by Henry James."

  • Some early Henry James short stories, uncollected by James unless otherwise indicated

    • The Sweetheart of M. Briseux- in .pdf format - a searchable photographic image of the original printing in The Galaxy, June 1873. Two painters: a starving genius with burning eyes contrasted with a well-fed, self-satisfied incompetent--with a woman to tell the tale.

    • A Light Man- in .pdf format - a searchable photographic image of the original printing in The Galaxy, July 1869. Later revised twice, the second time for Stories Revived (1885). James's epigraph invites us to compare this story with Robert Browning's "A Light Woman," as Sheldon Novick points out in his biography of James (Vol. I, pp. 181-82).

    • Travelling Companions - in .pdf format - a searchable photographic image of the original printing in The Atlantic Monthly of November-December, 1870 - Fruit of James's Italian tour of 1869-70, this romantic love story is richly furnished, almost overly furnished, with impressions of painting, architecture, and Italian atmosphere. Venice, to a young man, just discovering that he is in love, appears in a "golden glow," "a golden clearness so perfect that the rosy flush on the marble palaces seemed as light and pure as the life-blood on the forehead of a sleeping child." A good story to contrast with "The Aspern Papers."

    • Osborne's Revenge - in .pdf format - a searchable photographic image of the original printing in The Galaxy of July 1868. This story eschews the romantic elements found in several of James's very early stories. The ironic reversal at the end, undermining and changing everything that has gone before, may remind readers of the ironic reversal in The Ambassadors.

    • The Story of a Year (html) - A young woman in love with two men, one a soldier. The moralizing and "fine writing" of a young author, together with a somewhat unresolved ending, giving a foretaste of the more mature James. James's second published story. From The Atlantic Monthly (March 1865).

    • Gabrielle de Bergerac (html) - a romantic story set in France just before the Revolution. From The Atlantic Monthly (July through September, 1869).

    • Guest's Confession (html) - an engaging and rather neglected James short story. From The Atlantic Monthly (October and November, 1872).

  • Short Stories from the New York Edition of Henry James, volume 16

  • Longer works by Henry James

    • The American Scene, a freshly proofread etext - Henry James's commentary on his long visit to America which began in 1904. This is the original 1907 British edition, complete, which contains a concluding section not in the American edition. The new proofreading, by Leatrice Chan, was posted on August 25, 2007. Among the errors of the previous version was the omission of several lines on page 239.

    • Watch and Ward, a variorum etext, prepared by Jay S.Spina of Salem State College, assisted by Joseph Spina. This searchable .pdf file combines in one text the 1871 Atlantic Monthly version and James's very extensive revisions in 1878 for the book version. James's insertions are underlined, his deletions struck out. The notes at the end enumerate the discrepancies between these versions and the more readily available reprints of 1959.

    • Daisy Miller, a comparison of the 1879 and 1909 texts - A searchable .pdf file that combines in one text the 1879 first book edition and the 1909 New York edition. James's insertions are underlined and his deletions struck out.

    • The Portrait of a Lady (html, N.Y. Edition) - NOTE: James's Preface is for the first time included in an etext. Over six hundred corrections were entered in the summer of 1999. The many erroneous paragraph breaks, particularly in passages of dialogue, that were in the other etexts of this novel have been corrected. Over thirty discrepancies, sometimes substantive, between the 1908 New York Edition and the Norton Critical Edition have been marked. Five additional corrections were entered 5/17/03.
    • The Bostonians (html) - NOTE: Additional proofreading corrections were entered on 8/6/99 in the effort to make this an exact transcript of the 1886 edition, the last one published in James's lifetime.
    • The Wings of the Dove (html, N.Y. Edition) - NOTE: Many proofreading corrections were entered on 6/18/99, and a few additional ones on 1/24/2000.
    • The Ambassadors (html, N.Y. Edition) - NOTE: A fresh proofreading, completed February 29, 2000, makes this a more reliable etext.
    • The Golden Bowl (html, N.Y. Edition) - NOTE: Many corrections were entered on June 11, 2000. - This etext of The Golden Bowl has now been proofread by four persons. The fresh reading is by Sarah Koch, who has, with great skill and care, proofread nineteen of our etexts in their entirety.
    • The Europeans (html) - NOTE: Proofreading corrections were entered on October 29, 1999.
    • Washington Square (html) - NOTE: On December 22, 1999, a great many revisions were made in this etext to bring it into conformity with the London edition (Macmillan, 1881), for which James made his final revisions.
    • What Maisie Knew (html, N.Y. Edition)
    • The Sacred Fount (html)
    • Daisy Miller, N.Y. Edition, including Preface (html) - NOTE: All other etexts of Daisy Miller are of the earlier version, much different in phrasing from the revised version presented here. Readers are invited to download both versions and compare them.
    • Daisy Miller -1878 text (html, by chapters; illustrations taken from an 1892 edition) - Prepared and annotated by Eric Eldred, who is in the process of transferring some of his Web pages to other sites, including this one.
    • The Reverberator (html, N.Y.Edition) - a delightful Parisian bonbon - Serialized in Macmillan's Magazine February-July 1888, it was then published by Macmillan that year in both one-volume and two-volume formats.
    • In the Cage (html, N.Y. Edition) - NOTE: Proofreading corrections were entered on March 21, 2000.
    • Watch and Ward (html) - a new etext of James's first novel, as it originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (August through December, 1871). NOTE: A few proofreading corrections were entered on December 1, 2002.
    • Hawthorne, by Henry James (html, by chapters - Prepared by Eric Eldred)
    • The American Scene, Chapter 8: Concord and Salem (html - Prepared by Eric Eldred)

  • TABLE OF CONTENTS of "the Henry James scholar's Guide to Web Sites"
  • # Henry James etexts at New Paltz
  • # The Henry James E-Journal
  • # Cornell's Making of America image library
  • # Writings about (and by) Henry James, including film reviews
  • # Henry James etexts at other sites; Concordance
  • # Alternatives to the above Henry James etexts
  • # Finding other etexts
  • # WebMuseum, Paris - full-screen paintings in gorgeous color
  • # JamesF-L: an on-line discussion group
  • # Henry James conferences, Calls for papers
  • # The Henry James Review; Henry James Society; Henry James letters and papers
  • # Home pages of some American authors
  • # A grab bag: General Guides to Web sites - links to just about any author or any subject. Plus other goodies
  • # An on-line language translator
  • # Libraries, reference resources, books for sale
  • # Teaching: ideas and materials
  • # Using the World Wide Web
  • The Henry James E-Journal

    Cornell's Making of America image library

    • Browse Cornell's Making of America image library - Thousands of books and 19th-century periodicals are reproduced in their entirety as page-by-page images--for example The Atlantic Monthly, The Galaxy, and other periodicals in which James's stories and novels first appeared. Clicking on "J" at the bottom of the page allows you to browse in "J" authors and book titles, including Henry James. Each page image reproduces the original source exactly. Images are loaded one page at a time, can be zoomed, and are downloadable, one page at a time, in various formats, including pdf (Adobe Acrobat). For those wishing to do Optical Character Recognition or printing of images, the pdf format works especially well.
    • Nineteenth Century in Print: The Making of America in Periodicals - Provided by the Library of Congress, this search engine is another way, which some may find more user-friendly, of accessing not only the Cornell image library, but other images.

    Writings about (and by) Henry James, including film reviews

    Henry James etexts at other sites; Concordance

    • NEW: Cambridge Edition of The Portrait of a Lady - a link to the projected Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James. Etexts for variant editions of The Portrait of a Lady are already available on this site.

    • Henry James etexts at Adrian Dover's the Ladder - Annotations of the works and a concordance add to the interest of this excellent site. The following list may be incomplete, as Adrian Dover often adds new etexts of James's short stories to his site.
      Novels (with individual links):
      The Princess Casamassima; The Tragic Muse; The Spoils of Poynton; The Awkward Age; The Ivory Tower (with the long working note and extracts from the notebook entries);
      TALES Classified Menu - Alphabetical Menu
      NEW: The Beast in the Jungle; Sir Dominick Ferrand; The Way It Came (title later changed in the NYE to "The Friends of the Friends"; The Siege of London ;
      The Abasement of the Northmores; The Altar of the Dead; The Beldonald Holbein; The Bench of Desolation; The Birthplace; Broken Wings; Brooksmith; Collaboration; Covering End; Crapy Cornelia; A Day of Days; Flickerbridge; Fordham Castle; Georgina's Reasons; The Given Case; The Great Condition; John Delavoy; Julia Bride; Lady Barberina; The Last of the Valerii; The Liar; A Light Man; A London Life; Lord Beaupr'e; Louisa Pallant; Master Eustace; Maud-Evelyn; Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie; The Modern Warning; Mora Montravers; Mrs. Medwin; Mrs. Temperly; Owen Wingrave; The Papers; The Path of Duty; Poor Richard; The Private Life; The Real Right Thing; Rose Agatha; http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=176Do A Round of Visits; Sir Edmund Orme; The Solution; The Special Type; The Story in It; The Third Person; The Tone of Time; The Tree of Knowledge; The Turn of the Screw; The Two Faces; The Velvet Glove; The Visits; The Wheel of Time;
      PLAYS(use Menu):
      Summersoft and The High Bid (in both independent and parallel-text versions).
    • The Third Person - an annotated etext on Adrian Dover's Henry James site - "The one really entertaining comedy among the uncanny tales," comments S. Gorley Putt in A Reader's Guide to Henry James
    • NEW: Adrian Dover's Variant versions of James's tales - If you have an unidentified version of a James tale, go to this site for a good chance of working out which one it is.
    • A concordance to Henry James etexts at Adrian Dover's Web site
    • The American (text, the English Server)
    • Henry James etexts at the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia - (html, by chapters) The Altar of the Dead, Daisy Miller, The Aspern Papers, Confidence, The Turn of the Screw - Page down to the Henry James section. A large collection of other etexts can also be accessed at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/uvaonline.html.
    • The Jolly Corner (html, Gaslight, Mt. Royal College)

    • Etexts of Henry James works, accessed via Online Books (text and zip formats, some HTML)
      NEW: Below the Henry James etext section in Online Books is an important new feature: links to the Hathi Trust page views of James's works. A photocopied image is given for each page of James's works in both first editions and later editions.

    • Project Gutenberg etexts. These can be accessed directly via www.gutenberg.org, but you may find the "Online Books" gateway to Project Gutenberg etexts, the link given just above this one, convenient to use because it lists additional titles by James and Web sites other than Project Gutenberg. The following list is probably incomplete, as Project Gutenberg frequently adds new James etexts.
      The Ambassadors [originally prepared by Richard Hathaway, but unlike the text at New Paltz emended without notice and lacking his proofreading corrections of February 29, 2000], The Altar of the Dead, The American, The Aspern Papers, The Beast in the Jungle, The Beldonald Holbein, Brooksmith, The Chaperon, Confidence, The Coxon Fund, Daisy Miller (1879 text), The Death of the Lion, The Diary of a Man of Fifty, The Europeans, The Figure in the Carpet, Flickerbridge, Glasses, The Golden Bowl (1904 text), Greville Fane, In the Cage, An International Episode, The Jolly Corner, The Lesson of the Master, A Little Tour in France, The Madonna of the Future, The Marriages, Mrs. Medwin, Nona Vincent, Pandora, Sir Dominick Ferrand, The Patagonia, The Portrait of a Lady, The Pupil, The Real Thing, Roderick Hudson, The Story of [in] It, The Turn of the Screw
      The following Project Gutenberg etexts are available indirectly via other sources:
      * The Pension Beaurepas (text)
      * A Bundle of Letters (text)
      * The Point of View (text)
      * Washington Square (text) - 1921 Macmillan edition
      * Eugene Pickering (text)
      Many of these titles are also available, with the added feature of being by chapters, from Great Literature Online (html). But note that the etext of The Ambassadors is the same Gutenberg etext that lacks the proofreading corrections of February 29, 2000. Also note that this site is full of pop-up advertising.

    Alternatives to the above Henry James etexts

    • The Ambassadors (html, byGosh.com) - copied from the New Paltz etext and divided into chapters, but prior to its proofreading corrections of February 29, 2000
    • The Golden Bowl (html, byGosh.com) - not the New York Edition
    • The Portrait of a Lady - (html, by chapters, Bartleby.com) - not the New York Edition

    Finding other etexts

    • The On-Line Books Page - a good place to begin a search for etexts. It is also an easy way to access etexts of James's works and may sometimes have a more up-to-date list of them than the list on this page, above.
    • Athena - Pierre Perroud writes in 2011 "I have removed all links from http://athena.unige.ch/. They change too often and the work was too much time consuming. Now there are only texts edited at ATHENA, where urls will not change" -- principally of Rousseau and de Maupassant.
    • Project Gutenberg - a primary provider of etexts
    • University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center - Many of the etexts have restricted access.
    • Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database - links to novels, poems, stories with commentary; links to paintings and audio recordings
    • A Virtual Library of Virtual Libraries - a "bibliography of bibliographies" guide to etexts on the Web. Useful but by no means complete

    WebMuseum, Paris

    • WebMuseum, Paris - Nicolas Pioch's must-see site. A huge collection of great paintings, full-screen, full-color. Cap off the experience with a guided tour of Paris.

    JamesF-L: an on-line discussion group

      Postings devoted to Henry James

    • Click here for sample JamesF-L postings and for sending commands such as SUBSCRIBE, etc.
      Using this link for sending such commands as SUBSCRIBE and UNSUBSCRIBE will facilitate getting them to the correct address.
      The sample-posting topics include "THE TURN OF THE SCREW," "HENRY JAMES' GERMAN ESSAYS," and "HENRY JAMES AND HOMO-EROTIC DESIRE."

      Messages by list subscribers for posting (i.e. sending to all JamesF-L subscribers) go by email to JAMESF-L@LISTS.CREIGHTON.EDU.

    Henry James conference announcements and calls for papers

    • NEW: The Henry James Society invites papers for the following panel at the 30th Annual Conference of the American Literature Association, to be held in Boston, MA 23-26 May at the Westin Copley Place

      "Theatrical James"

      Henry James's early exposure to, and great delight in, the theatre is amply documented in his autobiographies. His fascination for the stage and his interest in drama as a narrative mode found expression in his work from the very beginning of his career, and informed several of his short stories and novels well before he actually tried his hand at playwriting. The Henry James Society invites papers that examine stage effects, dramatic (and/or melodramatic) scenes, histrionics, stage metaphors, references or allusions to plays, in James's production before 1889.

      Send 200-300 word abstracts to Leonardo Buonomo (buonomo@units.it) and Greg W. Zacharias (GREGZACHARIAS@creighton.edu) by January 20, 2019

    • NEW: Henry James Society
      8th International Conference, Trieste 4-6 July 2019
      The Sound of James: The Aural Dimension in Henry James's Work

      While James's hyper-active eye, his keen sensitivity to the visual, and abundant literary use of painting, have been the subject of extensive and probing scholarship, his attention to sound, and indeed his general relationship with it, have been only sporadically examined. And yet even a cursory glance at James's long career reveals his continuing alertness and discriminating responsiveness to auditory experience. From his early tales of the 1860s to his thre massive novels of the first decade of the twentieth century, from his first travel pieces to The American Scene and Italian Hours, and throughout his criticism, autobiographies, notebooks, correspondence and unfinished work, James recorded the constantly changing soundscapes of the United States and Europe and left significant evidence of his interest in, and commitment to, the aural dimension of his writing. No less than his eye, James's ear captured the minutest nuances of social, cultural, local and national difference and transformation, together with the impact of technology, and the role of music as an element of setting or a delineator of character.

      The Henry James Society invites papers and complete panel proposals on the many facets of James's relationship with sound. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

      The new sounds of modernity and technology
      Noise
      The sounds of multi-ethnic America
      The question of speech (American vs British)
      Speech as a marker of class
      Gender-based speech
      The distinctive voice of James's narrators
      Sound effects in James's writing
      The role of listening or hearing
      The sonics of James's style
      Silences in James's writing
      James's use of foreign words and/or rendering of foreign languages and accents in English
      Pronunciation and diction
      The sound of James in translation
      Music in James and/or James set to music
      The effect of dictation on James's writing
      The sound of James in stage, radio, film, and television adaptations
      Jamesian echoes during his lifetime and after

      Please send an abstract (250 words) and a short biographpy (one paragraph) as well as panel proposals to Leonardo Buonomo, conference director (buonomo@units.it), Giulia Iannuzzi (giannuzzi@units.it), and Greg Zacharias (gwzach@creighton.edu) by December 15, 2018.

    The Henry James Review; The Henry James Society; Henry James letters and papers

    • The Henry James Review
    • The Henry James Society - Founded in 1979, the Henry James Society devotes itself to encouraging scholarly, as well as public, interest in Henry James and the James family. The Society publishes _The Henry James Review_, edited by Susan M. Griffin at the University of Louisville and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The annual subscription rate of $35 includes membership in the James Society. The Executive Director is Greg W. Zacharias, Creighton University, (gwzach@creighton.edu). The current President is Donatella Izzo (dizzo@unior.it).

    • Transcriptions of Early Letters to Henry James - These letters, in the Houghton Library at Harvard, have never been published before and will probably never be available in book form. The editor for this site, "dearhenryjames.org", is Pierre A. Walker, Professor of English at Salem State College and co-general editor of the Complete Letters of Henry James (email: "editor@dearhenryjames.org"). The letters are transcribed by Pierre Walker, Jamie Jamieson, and Jay S. Spina.
    • Henry James complete-letters project - a project at Creighton University, Nebraska, to collect and publish copies of all of Henry James's letters.
    • Henry James correspondence and journals at the Houghton Library - a listing by date and correspondent of 2221 letters at Harvard's Houghton Library, catalogued under the call number bMS Am 1094, (about half of the Houghton Library's collection of Henry James's manuscript letters). plus 16 volumes of diaries and appointment books. Includes correspondence of Alice James.
    • Letters to Henry James from Robert Louis Stevenson - complete texts of the letters
    • James Family Papers inventory - The papers are on loan from Ms. Bay James to Creighton University. The inventory describes each item fully, with brief quotations. Permission to copy the inventory is not required.
    • An on-line calendar of Henry James's letters - a calendar of almost 10,500 letters and a register of more than 1,000 correspondents; compiled by Susan Gunter and Steven H. Jobe

    Home pages of some American authors

    A grab bag: General guides to Web sites. Links to just about any author or any subject. Plus other goodies

    • Reading Group Guides.com - Discussion questions for book groups. Brief descriptions of books and quotations from reviews. Hundreds of book titles, particularly of contemporary novels. A few 19th-century books. Several William Faulkner titles, but no Henry James.
    • Something from Japan: Mitsuharu Matsuoka's home page - 19th-century English literature (especially Gaskell, Gissing, and Dickens); American literature. See the Index for a remarkably varied list of topics. Links to museums, publishers, newspapers all over the world.
    • Literary Resources on the Net - Jack Lynch's links to everything from Cicero to semiotics. Home pages, calls for papers, mailing lists, etc.
    • Voice of the Shuttle home page - Alan Liu's unusually comprehensive guide to Web sites. Of particular interest to scholars in the humanities. Note that "Literature (English)" on the menu includes American literature.
    • Donna M. Campbell's site - a useful gateway to many resources: literary Web sites, bibliographies, discussion questions, etc. Clicking on "American Literature Site," then on "Henry James" brings up a rich array of links. A great many American authors, especially 19th-century ones are similarly covered.
    • Eldritch Press page - links to many items of interest, including the campaign against the new copyright law that restricts creation of etexts
    • ZD Net - reviews of computer hardware and software, with price comparisons for different retail sources
    • The New York Times

    An on-line language translator

    • Bing language translator - Need help translating Henry James's French? Bing translates several languages, though the results may not fit a particular context. Accents for characters are not needed.

    Libraries, reference resources, books for sale

    Teaching: ideas and materials

    Searching the Web

    • Google - The premier search engine.
    • Open Directory Project - a comprehensive directory of the Web, maintained by humans, not machines. The editors are volunteers who have come forward, each to edit a category. A category can be as small as single author. To find Henry James, click in succession on Arts, Literature, Authors, J, James.
    • Yahoo - turns up fewer irrelevancies than AltaVista, WebCrawler, Excite, Lycos, and HotBot
    • WebCrawler
    • Lycos, HotBot
    • About.com
    • Uses humans, not automated Web crawlers, to find new Web sites, says The New York Times. To save time with About.com, instead of entering your query in the "search box," experiment with clicking on topics to narrow down your search. For example, Arts/Humanities>Literature Classic>American Authors>Henry James
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    General information about the Web

    Writing for the Web. Software downloads.


    In Heaven there'll be no algebra,
    No learning dates or names,
    But only playing golden harps
    And reading Henry James.
    . . . . . . , (Anonymous)

    Richard D. Hathaway, Professor Emeritus of English
    SUNY New Paltz
    New Paltz, NY 12561, USA


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    Page last updated March 14, 2019