Contemporary American Literature Part 36

Harp. W. 46 ('02): 929 (portrait), 947; 56 ('12): Mar. 9, pp. 5, 27 (portrait).

Ind. 72 ('12): 533 (portrait).

J. Educ. 65 ('07): 311.

Lit. Digest, 44 ('12): 485; 65 ('20): My. 29, p. 34, Je. 12, p. 53 (portrait), Je. 19, pp. 37, 56.

Liv. Age, 294 ('17): 173; 306 ('20): 98; 308 ('21): 304; 312 ('21): 304.

Lond. Mer., 2 ('20): 133.

Lond. Times, Dec. 7, 1916: 585.

Nation, 31 ('80): 49 (W.C. Brownell); 104 ('17): 261; 110 ('20): 673.

New Repub. 10 ('17): supp. p. 3; 22 ('20): 393; 26 ('21): 192.

New Statesman, 15 ('20): 195.

No. Am. 176 ('03): 336; 195 ('12): 432 (portrait), 550; 196 ('12): 339; 212 ('20): 1 (portrait), 17.

Outlook, 69 ('01): 712 (portrait); 111 ('15): 786, 798 (portrait); 129 ('21): 187 (portrait).

R. of Rs. 61 ('20): 562 (portrait), 644.

Sat. Rev. 91 ('01): 806.

Spec. 98 ('07): 450; 117 ('16): 834.

Westm. R. 178 ('12): 597.

World's Work, 18 ('09): 11547. (Van Wyck Brooks.) Yale Rev. n.s. 10 ('20): 99.

Cf. also _Cambridge_, III (IV), 665.

+James Gibbons Huneker+--critic.

Born at Philadelphia, 1860. Graduate of Roth's Military Academy, Philadelphia, 1873. Studied law five years at the Law Academy, Philadelphia. Studied piano in Paris and was for ten years a.s.sociated with Rafael Joseffy, as teacher of piano at the National Conservatory, New York. Musical and dramatic critic of the _New York Recorder_, 1891-5; of the _Morning Advertiser_, 1895-7; also musical, dramatic, and art critic of the _New York Sun_. Died in 1921.

For an understanding of Mr. Huneker's criticisms, it is well to begin with his autobiography (_Steeplejack_).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mezzotints in Modern Music. 1899.

Melomaniacs. 1902.

Overtones. 1904.

Iconoclasts--A Book of Dramatists. 1905.

Visionaries. 1905.

Egoists--A Book of Supermen. 1909.

Promenades of an Impressionist. 1910.

The Pathos of Distance. 1913.

Ivory Apes and Peac.o.c.ks. 1915.

New Cosmopolis. 1915.

Unicorns. 1917.

Steeplejack. 1919.

Painted Veils. 1920.

Bedouins. 1920.

Variations. 1921.

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Mencken, H.L. Prefaces.

Bookm. 11 ('00): 501 (portrait); 21 ('05): 79 (portrait), 564, 565 (portrait); 29 ('09): 236 (portrait); 31 ('14): 241 (portrait); 37 ('13): 598 (portrait); 41 ('15): 246 (portrait); 53 ('21): 124.

Cent. 102 ('21): 191.

Critic, 36 ('00): 487 (portrait).

Cur. Lit. 39 ('05): 75 (portrait); 42 ('07): 167; 47 ('09): 57 (portrait).

Cur. Op. 65 ('18): 392; 70 ('21): 534. (Portraits.) Forum, 41 ('09): 600.

Lit. Digest, 68 ('21): Mar. 5, p. 28 (portrait).

Liv. Age, 309 ('21): 426.

New Repub. 25 ('21): 357.

No. Am. 213 ('21): 556.

Outlook, 126 ('20): 469 (portrait); 127 ('21): 286.

Sat. Rev. 97 ('04): 551.

Spec. 115 ('15): 879.

+Fannie Hurst+ (Missouri, 1889)--short-story writer, novelist.

Has studied especially the lives of working girls. For bibliography, see _Who's Who in America_.

+Wallace Irwin+ (New York, 1875)--short-story writer.

Most characteristic material life in California and the j.a.panese there.

For bibliography, see _Who's Who in America_.

+Henry James+--novelist.

Born in New York City, 1843. Younger brother of William James, the psychologist. Educated largely in France and Switzerland. Studied at the Harvard Law School. After 1869, lived for the most part abroad, chiefly in England. Spent much time at Lamb House, Rye, a beautiful eighteenth century English house which he purchased in order to live in retirement.

Just before his death, to show his sympathy for the part played by England in the War and his criticism of what he considered our backwardness, he became naturalized as a British citizen. In 1916, received the Order of Merit (O.M.), the highest honor for literary men conferred in England. His death in 1916 was attributed to overstrain caused by the War and his efforts to help the sufferers.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

1. A good approach to the work of Henry James is through the three articles from the _Quarterly Review_ listed below. Mr. Fullerton sums up the material scattered through the prefaces to the definitive edition of 1909. Mr. Percy Lubbock writes as the editor of the _Letters_. Mrs.

Wharton adds to criticism of the _Letters_ illuminating personal reminiscences.

2. One of the important _Prefaces_ on James's theory of the novel and his method of work is that to the _Portrait of a Lady_, from which the extract below is taken. In speaking of Turgenev's att.i.tude toward his characters, James says:

He saw them, in that fashion, as disponible, saw them subject to the chances, the complications of existence, and saw them vividly but then had to find for them the right relations, those that would most bring them out; to imagine, to invent and select and piece together the situations most useful and favourable to the sense of the creatures themselves, the complications they would be most likely to produce and to feel.

"To arrive at these things is to arrive at my 'story,' he said, "and that's the way I look for it. The result is that I'm often accused of not having 'story' enough...."

So this beautiful genius, and I recall with comfort the grat.i.tude I drew from his reference to the intensity of suggestion that may reside in the stray figure, the unattached character, the image _en disponible_. It gave me higher warrant than I seemed then to have met for just that blest habit of one's own imagination, the trick of investing some conceived or encountered individual, some brace or group of individuals, with the germinal property and authority. I was myself so much more antecedently conscious of my figures than of their setting--a too preliminary, a preferential interest in which struck me as in general such a putting of the cart before the horse.

I might envy, though I couldn't emulate, the imaginative writer so const.i.tuted as to see his fable first and to make out his agents afterwards: I could think so little of any situation that didn't depend for its interest on the nature of the persons situated, and thereby on their way of taking it....

The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and the degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs. The quality and capacity of that soil, its ability to "grow" with due freshness and straightness any vision of life, represents, strongly or weakly, the projected morality. That element is but another name for the more or less close connexion of the subject with some mark made on the intelligence, with some sincere experience.