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Title: Henry James: the treacherous years, 1895-1901 by Leon Edel ISBN: 0-246-98599-2 Publisher: Hart-Davis Pub. Date: 1969 Format: Unknown Binding

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Undramatic exit
Comment: James's entry to theater life occurred through invitation and the desire for more income from his writing. He found writing dialogue more difficult than he had supposed. He found that provincial success could be limited to the provinces. Tthe success did excite him and make him seem more youthful.

His play THE AMERICAN was to open at the Strand in London. The first night in September 1891 was a dubious success. Robert Lincoln, the American minister, was present. The writing in the play was obscure. THE AMERICAN, the play, was more melodramatic than the novel. James's work in the theater was work against the grain.

The deafness of James's friend Constance Fenimore Woolson made her solitary. She had moved from Florence to Oxford. She then proceeded to arrange to spend a winter in Venice. Toward Christmas she began to look for unfurnished apartments. She died in January in 1894 having succumbed to melancholy. He felt he had some responsibility for her end. He wrote in THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD of the strange mutual vision of a man and a woman causing him to recall his friend Fenimore. Later he would write in THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE of muted antagonisms.

Minny Temple had died when James was twenty seven. In Novemeber 1894 he set down the notes that a decade later would become THE WINGS OF THE DOVE. At the same time he was concerned with his play, GUY DOMVILLE. In 1894 he had published four comedies that had little chance of production after having made the rounds for two years.

GUY DOMVILLE opened in January 1895. H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Arnold Bennett were present. When the author went on to the stage opening night, he was booed. OWEN WINGRAVE is rooted in James's vision of the Civil War. The vivid tale is one of the most deterministic James ever wrote. Ellen Terry invited James to write a one act play for her American tour. She had witnessed his humiliation.

Between 1895 and 1900 James regressed as evidenced by the novels he wrote. James had a sense of being misunderstood. THE SPOILS OF POYNTON is a story of an old house and old things. James seems at odds with his characters and his plot. James was now using a scenic method and play-writing technique.

He had writers' cramp. He engaged a stenographer while writing WHAT MAISIE KNEW. After several years of dictating, the later manner of Henry James emerged. Typewriters were large. He could no longer travel and write. In 1897 James acquired Lamb House at Rye. He wrote THE TURN OF THE SCREW, a story of a haunted governess.

James and H.G. Wells were good friends during the Edwardian years. In THE AMBASSADORS the message was that man must live with full intensity. At age fifty seven in 1900 James felt that this was the case. He had shaved his beard. His new novel was about the rigidities of New England and the relaxed atmosphere of Europe. In the novel the author reconciled himself to diminished omniscience.