Henry James

For scholars as for the rest of the world, this was a difficult year. But like James as a small boy who enjoyed his swing even in a rainstorm, I have found “pleasure amid difficulties.” Our editors, David Nordloh and Gary Scharnhorst, responded generously to my requests for books and articles when I faced closed libraries and restricted interlibrary loans when preparing this chapter. And despite its decrease in quantity, James scholarship in 2019 continues its tradition of high quality. Peter Collister’s new edition of The American Scene is an indispensable guide to this experimental narrative, while clusters of essays on The Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors (the most frequently taught major novels) should renew debates among teachers and students. Other critics focus on neglected shorter tales, some of which prove to be paradigmatic. Jesse Matz, for example, treats “The Tone of Time” as a key to James’s temporal extensions; Collister discusses “The Birthplace” as an expression of the author’s ambivalence toward the emerging phenomenon of literary tourism; and Joseph Elkanah Rosenberg examines “Crapy Cornelia” for its surprising clues to James’s mixed opinions of a new genre, the cinema. Finally, this year’s special topic of the Henry James Review (HJR) elicited so many critical responses that some articles will appear in the first issue for 2020. © 2021 by Duke University Press.