Cult of the Master The later Henry James was a master of technique. But how good a novelist was he? Henry James: Novels 1896-1899 Library of America he story of Henry James's fruitless flirtation with the theater has been so often told that it has become folkloric, invoked and repeated by generations of marveling Jamesians. Everyone knows the tale of the first night, in London, of his historical play Guy Domville (1895) --how the nervous playwright …
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…ed by Myra Jehlen, presents just the texts themselves, with a minimum of notes and no introduction. The enterprise, like Henry James's charge into the West End, seems quixotic; it suggests a faith in the interests, not to mention the capacities, of the common reader that may turn out to be sweetly superstitious. We shall see. Still, it is welcome, and adds permanence to permanence, enshrining these now canonical works in this now canonical library.