' ... in Egypt during the Great War [E. M.] Forster applied himself to read [Henry] James. Struggling with What Maisie Knew (1897), he rather thought that "she is my very limit ..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'I bought a book by Henry James yesterday and read it, as they say, "until far into the night". It was not very interesting or very good, but I can wade through pages and pages of dull, turgid James for the sake of that sudden sweet shock, that violent throb of delight that he gives me at times. I don't doubt this is genius: only there is an extraordinary amount of pan and an amazingly raffine' flash - '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'"Why do you want to break men's spirits for?" Shaw asked Henry James after reading his one-act play "The Saloon" in 1909.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Bernard Shaw
Elizabeth Morrison, "Serial Fiction in Australian Colonial Newspapers": " ... the short novel A Woman's Friendship ... owes much to [Ada] Cambridge's reading of George Eliot, George Meredith, Henry James, and William Dean Howells ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ada Cambridge Print: Unknown
'[Neville] Cardus read only boys' papers until quite suddenly, in adolescence, he dove into Dickens and Mark Twain. "Then, without scarcely a bridge-passage, I was deep in the authors who to this day I regard the best discovered in a lifetime" - Fielding, Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, even Henry James. He found them all before he was twenty, with critical guidance from no one: "We must make our own soundings and chartings in the arts... so that we may all one day climb to our own peak, silent in Darien".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
'A.E. Coppard, a laundrywoman's son who grew up in dire poverty, left school at nine, ascended the ranks of clerkdom and became (at age forty) a professional author. At fourteen he was still enjoying "Deadeye Dick", by twenty he was reading Henry James...He secured a literary education at the Brighton Public Library, and as a professional runner he used prize money to buy Hardy's poems, Shakespeare, Mackail's translation of "The Odyssey", and William Morris's "The Earthly Paradise". In an undemanding job... he read on company time, though there was a row when his supervisor found "Jude the Obscure" on his desk'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Edgar Coppard Print: Book
Leon Edel notes re Henry James's unsigned review of Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, in North American Review (July 1865): "Arnold read this review and praised it to his friends unaware it was the work of a twenty-two-year-old novice."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Arnold Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to William James, 1 January 1870 (letter begun 27 December 1869): " ... I felt a most refreshing blast of paternity, the other day in reading Father's reply to a 'Swedenborgian,' in a number [of The Nation] that I saw at the bankers."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Henry James Sr, 14 January 1870: "With your letter [of 22 December 1869] came two Nations, with your Swedenborgian letters, which I had already seen and I think mentioned. I read at the same time in an Atlantic borrowed from the Nortons, your article on the woman business ... your Atlantic article I decidedly liked ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Henry James Sr, 14 January 1870: "With your letter [of 22 December 1869] came two Nations, with your Swedenborgian letters, which I had already seen and I think mentioned. I read at the same time in an Atlantic borrowed from the Nortons, your article on the woman business ... your Atlantic article I decidedly liked ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr, 24 March 1873: "Thank him [Henry James Sr] ... greatly for his story of Mr Webster. It is admirable material, and excellently presented: I have transcribed it in my notebook with religious care, and think that some day something will come of it."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Sheet
Henry James to William Dean Howells, 9 January 1874, regarding first half of "tale" (Eugene Pickering) being sent in separate cover: "I have been reading it to my brother who pronounces it 'quite brilliant.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Unknown
Henry James to William James, 2 January 1885: "Three days ago ... came the two copies of Father's (and your) book ... All I have had time to read as yet is the introduction ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book, Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson to Henry James, November-early December 1887: "I must break out with the news that I can't bear the Portrait of a Lady. I read it all, and I wept, too; but I can't stand your having written it, and I beg you will write no more of the like."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Henry James to Mrs. Henry James Sr., 8 May 1876: "The other day I was at the house of a dreadful old lion huntress, Mme. Blaze de Bury -- an Englishwoman with a French husband and daughter. She invited me, unsolicited, from having read my threadbare tales in the Revue des Deux Mondes ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mme. Blaze de Bury Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Wiliam James, 28 February 1877: " ... [Henry Sidgwick] has read Roderick Hudson (!) and asked me to stop with him at Cambridge."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Sidgwick Print: Unknown
Henry James to Henry James Sr., 19 April 1878: "Two days since I dined with Frederick Macmillan to meet Mr Grove, the editor of their magazine, who had just been reading The American ... 'with great delight.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Archibald Grove Print: Unknown
Henry James to Henry James Sr., 29 May 1878: " ... Sir Charles Dilke ... appears to have found time ... to read and be 'struck' by my French essays."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Charles Dilke Print: Unknown
Henry James to Mrs F. H. Hill, 21 March 1879, on his characterisation of Lord Lambeth in Daisy Miller: "That he says 'I say' rather too many times is very probable (I thought so, quite, myself, in reading over the thing as a book): but that strikes me as a rather venial flaw."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr., 8 April 1879: "I have received father's book from Trubner -- but really to read it I must lay it aside till the summer. I have however dipped into it and found it a great fascination."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Henry James Sr., 11 January 1880: "I know there are quite too many 'I's' in my Sainte-Beuve -- they shocked me very much when I saw it in print, and they would never have stayed had I seen it in proof."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Leon Edel notes: "In the weeks after his mother's death H[enry]J[ames] converted 'Daisy Miler' into a play, and before sailing read it to Mrs. [Isabella Stewart]Gardner."
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James
Leon Edel notes, regarding Henry James's letter to James B. Pinker of 14 October 1907: 'The eminent actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson read H[enry]J[ames]'s story "Covering End" in "The Two Magics" (1898) and proposed that the novelist turn it into a play for him.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Johnston Forbes-Robertson Print: Book
'Bennett selected the things that interested him - notably novelists such as Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and his friend George Paston. It was through a review of a book by H. G. Wells that the two men first became friends, Bennett taking the initiative and writing to Wells in September 1897 to say how much he liked his work, and to ask him how well he knew the Potteries, which Wells had mentioned in several of his stories.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Sunday, 21st February,
Discussion group ? nothing doing ? arrived late. Members busy with a game in which, with the help of a pin and a newspaper they lost or won pennies. Whisper it not in Gath ? I joined in and ? extreme of immorality ? lost !
Read ? ?The American? (Henry James)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Virginia Stephen to Clive Bell, 18 August 1907:
'I am reading Henry James on America; and feel myself as one embalmed in a block of
smooth amber: it is not unpleasant, very tranquil, as a twilight shore -- but such is not the
stuff of genius: no, it should be a swift stream.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 22 October 1915:
'I should think I had read 600 books since we met. Please tell me what merit you find in Henry
James. I have disabused Leonard [Woolf, husband] of him; but we have his works here, and I
read, and can't find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar, and
pale as Walter Lamb. Is there really any sense in it? I admit I can't be bothered to snuff out
his meaning when it's very obscure. I am beginning the Insulted and Injured [Dostoevsky,
1862]; which sweeps me away. Have you read it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Ottoline Morrell, 18 August 1922:
'Poor Rebecca West's novel bursts like an over stuffed sausage. She pours it all in; and one is
covered with flying particles; indeed I had hastily to tie the judge tight and send it back to
Mudies [Library] half finished. But this irreticence does not make me think any the worse of
her human qualities [...] I do admire poor old Henry [James], and actually read through the
Wings of a Dove [1902] last summer, and thought it such an amazing acrobatic feat, partly of
his, partly of mine, that I now look upon myself and Henry James as partners in merit. I made
it all out. But I felt very ill for some time afterwards. I am now reading Joyce, and my
impression, after 200 out of 700 pages, is that the poor young man has got the dregs of a
mind compared even with George Meredith. I mean if you could weigh the meaning on Joyces
[sic] page it would be about 10 times as light as on Henry James'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 30 August 1928:
'I am happy because it is the loveliest August [...] I read Proust, Henry James, Dostoevsky'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Monday 12 September 1921: 'I have finished the Wings of the Dove, & make this comment. His [Henry James's] manipulations become so elaborate towards the end that instead of feeling the artist you merely feel the man who is posing the subject. And then I think he loses the power to feel the crisis. He becomes merely excessively ingenious [goes on to comment further on text].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sunday 14 May 1933: 'I am reading -- skipping -- the Sacred Fount [by Henry James] -- about the most inappropriate of all books for this din -- sitting by the open window, looking across heads & heads & heads -- all Siena parading in gray & pink & the cars hooting. How finely run along all those involuted thread [in James]? I dont -- thats the answer. I let 'em break. I only mark that the sign of a masterly writer is the power to break his mould callously [goes on to comment further on James].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 30 August 1934: 'No letters at all this summer. But there will be many next year, I predict. And I dont mind; the day, yesterday to be exact, being so triumphant: writing: the walk; reading, Leeson, a detective, Saint Simon, Henry James' preface to P. of a Lady -- very clever, [word illegible] but one or two things I recognise: then Gide's Journal, again full of stratling recollection -- things I cd have said myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I had this morning a charming surprise in the shape of the "Spoils of Poynton" sent me by H. James with a very characteristic and friendly inscription on the flyleaf. I need not tell you how pleased I am. I have already read the book. It is as good as anything of his--almost--a story of love and wrongheadedness revolving around a houseful of artistic furniture. It's Henry James and nothing but Henry James.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'PS I've read "Two Magics" Henry James's last. The first story ["The Turn of the Screw"] is all there. He extracts an intellectual thrill out of the subject. The second ["Covering End"] is unutterable rubbish.Quite a shock to one of the faithful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Thursday 24 June 1937: 'A letter from Ott. [...] She has been [italics]very[end italics] ill [following stroke] [...] but is recovering at Tunbridge Wells. Pipsy reads Emma to her, & she reads H. James to herself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Ottoline Morrell Print: Book
Referring to criticism of Henry James by John Galsworthy that James did not 'write from the heart':
'To me even "R.T." ["The Real Thing" 1892,1893] seems to flow from the heart because and only because the work approaching [sic] so near perfection yet does not strike cold.[...] The outlines are so clear the figures so finished, chiselled, carved and brought out[...]. The volume of short stories entitled I think "The Lesson of the Master" [1892] contains a tale called "The Pupil" if I remember rightly where the underlying feeling of the man --his really wide sympathy--is seen nearer the surface.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Unknown
Referring to criticism of Henry James by John Galsworthy that James did not 'write from the heart':
'To me even "R.T." ["The Real Thing" 1892,1893] seems to flow from the heart because and only because the work approaching [sic] so near perfection yet does not strike cold.[...] The outlines are so clear the figures so finished, chiselled, carved and brought out[...]. The volume of short stories entitled I think "The Lesson of the Master" [1892] contains a tale called "The Pupil" if I remember rightly where the underlying feeling of the man --his really wide sympathy--is seen nearer the surface.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Unknown
'...- I spend 5 days of precious time toiling through Henry James' subtleties for Mrs Lyttleton, and write a very hardworking review for her...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 27 January 1905:
'I sit in the Kachcheri [a government office] most of the day & sign my name. I play tennis, dine, read Henry James (Jaffna has a library which contains him & [Dinah Craik's] John Halifax, Gentleman), & go to bed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 23 July 1905:
'I have just finished The Golden Bowl & am astounded. Did he invent us or we him? He uses [italics]all[end italics] our words in their most technical sense & we can't have got them all from him'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 January 1906:
'I have practically settled down for two weeks here [...] it is one immense sea of hills [...] I walk out onto these & wander from about 7-9 every morning & from 4-6 every evening, the rest of the day I read Voltaire's letters, Huysmans & Henry James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
E. M. Forster to George Barger, 27 July 1899:
'I have had a good time in Scotland & here [Northumberland] & go home next week. I have just read James' "A portrait of a Lady" [sic]. It is very wonderful but there's something wrong with him or me: he is not as George Meredith. Now I'm reading the Forest Lovers by Maurice Hewlett, and am a little bored though there is lots of delightful writing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster (aunt), 25 August 1916:
'Your welcome letter to Darkest Africa has been followed by a "real" Missionary magazine, which I have also enjoyed. Work here [as Red Cross officer tracing missing soldiers] is quieter again, which leaves me time for reading, and while you were at H. J.'s Portrait of a Lady I was tackling his latter and tougher end in the person of What Maisie Knew. I haven't [italics]quite[end italics] got through her yet, but I think I shall: she is my very limit -- beyond her lies The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors and other impossibles. I don't think James could have helped his later manner -- is [sic] a natural development, not a pose. All that one can understand of him seems so genuine, that what one can't understand is likely to be genuine also.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster (aunt), 25 August 1916:
'Your welcome letter to Darkest Africa has been followed by a "real" Missionary magazine, which I have also enjoyed. Work here [as Red Cross officer tracing missing soldiers] is quieter again, which leaves me time for reading, and while you were at H. J.'s Portrait of a Lady I was tackling his latter and tougher end in the person of What Maisie Knew. I haven't [italics]quite[end italics] got through her yet, but I think I shall: she is my very limit -- beyond her lies The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors and other impossibles. I don't think James could have helped his later manner -- is [sic] a natural development, not a pose. All that one can understand of him seems so genuine, that what one can't understand is likely to be genuine also.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Laura Mary Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Robert Trevelyan, 29 January 1918:
'I am already deep in The Piddle Years [sic]. I never find Henry James difficult to understand, though it [italics]is[end italics] difficult to throw off the interests of one's larger life, and flatten oneself -- flat flatter flattest -- to crawl down his slots.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Siegfried Sassoon, 2 May 1918:
'Have just finished The Sense of the Past, and though it's so obscure -- find it much nearer the work of other writers than is the rest of the later James. He is really interested in his subject [time travel] as well as in his treatment of it. And a topping subject.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Among texts discussed and quoted from at length in 1926 Commonplace Book of E. M. Forster is Henry James, The Ambassadors, with comments including 'Pattern exquisitely woven,' and 'However hard you shake his sentences, no banality falls out.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Texts quoted from at length in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1931) include Henry James, Letters, passages from which cover topics including the writings of Pater, Kipling and Hardy.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
MS notes and marks throughout, including: "May 2 1919. Exquisite book! I seem to hear my dear friend [Henry James] talk, - oh so slowly - as we stroll arm in arm in the Warwickshire meadows which he loved so long and well - as I loved him, and he me". On t-p: "Trevelyan Welcombe"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Various MS notes and marks including date of reading: June 23 1923 and a note on p.311 "The birthplace": "This was based on the story of Mr. Skipsey, told to Carry [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] by the Spence Watsons, and by her to Henry James."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Marginal marks and MS notes. Dates of reading on final page and the note: "What was the year when we saw so much of the American family who so much reminded us of the Dossons? It could not be 1913; as we spent Christmas with them in Rome; and in 1913 Carry [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] never left her bed!"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Various marginal marks and MS dates of reading including: "Welcombe. Read to C[Lady Caroline Trevelyan] and Anna [his sister-in-law]. Feb 14 1910"; "Feb 21 1924".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
This book has copious notes and marginal marks, including many unrelated to the text written on pastedown and fly-leaf: "I used to note down sentences for my history, that had ocurred to me in the watches of the night, in the flyleaf of the novel which I had in hand at that time."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'In H. James " Little Tour of France" (which I will send to Ada [Galsworthy] to take west with her for leisurely reading) there occurs a simple sentence which came forcibly to my mind. He had been looking at some picture in a provincial gallery--and he says: All this is painted in a manner to bring tears into one's eyes. I don't quote literally--(the book is downstairs where it is dark and I feel too fagged out doing nothing to move from my chair)--but that's just it!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'They have arrived--the 6 of them; I have felt them all in turn and all at one time as it were, and to celebrate the event I have given myself a holiday for the morning, not to read any of them --I could not settle to that, but to commune with them all, and gloat over the promise of the prefaces. But of these last I have read one already, the preface to "The American",the first of your long novels I ever read--in '91.[...] I could not resist the temptation of reading the beautiful and touching last ten pages of the story. There is in them a perfection of tone which calmed me; and I sat for a long time with the closed volume in my hand going over the preface in my mind and thinking--that's how it began,that's how it was done!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'They have arrived--the 6 of them; I have felt them all in turn and all at one time as it were, and to celebrate the event I have given myself a holiday for the morning,not to read any of them --I could not settle to that, but to commune with them all, and gloat over the promise of the prefaces. But of these last I have read one already, the preface to "The American",the first of your long novels I ever read--in '91.[...] I could not resist the temptation of reading the beautiful and touching last ten pages of the story. There is in them a perfection of tone which calmed me; and I sat for a long time with the closed volume in my hand going over the preface in my mind and thinking--that's how it began,that's how it was done!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Thank you for the fine present.[...] While reading delightedly this little work which shines with so soft a brightness, I have for a moment been able to forget the passage of time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'His [Henry James] autobiographical two books are admirable; but what makes them so wonderful are the very same qualities that make his novels admirable.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'His [Henry James] autobiographical two books are admirable; but what makes them so wonderful are the very same qualities that make his novels admirable.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Rose 7.15 and seem to have spent day writing, going on with Henry James's "Ambassadors", finishing "Britling", but most of all sleeping.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Bed 10.30, nearing end of wonderful "Ambassadors".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'But having time to write up this, with a letter or so, to fifnish the amazing "Ambassadors", as well as "Embarrassments" (I and III especially good) the unusual "Other House" and a volume of Leslie Stephen (a little diffuse), and eaten very little with never a threat of nausea, I have suffered from nothing beyond irritation at the abnormal dalay,with faint boredom at the meals.[...] Read also five Sonnets every morning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'But having time to write up this, with a letter or so, to finish the amazing "Ambassadors", as well as "Embarrassments" (I and III especially good) the unusual "Other House" and a volume of Leslie Stephen (a little diffuse), and eaten very little with never a threat of nausea, I have suffered from nothing beyond irritation at the abnormal delay,with faint boredom at the meals.[...] Read also five Sonnets every morning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'In the morning a little "Inferno". James's "Washington Square" (his first, American manner) and Turgeneff's [sic] "Fumée"; but Russian books are always a slight effort to me, I suppose by reason of the leakage of style in translation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'For my own War reading I found, as the popularity of "The Times Broadsheets" proved, that the essential was, remoteness from actuality. Henry James, by his sublime irrelevance to the general agony, provided escape, civilisation — almost intelligence. [Entry continues as diary or letter extract inserted into text]. My greatest acquisition is some realisation of his extraordinary greatness. Since Desdemona dropped her handkerchief, no one has managed to extract such thrills out of the apparently unimportant. My other refuge is William Blake — the first or the second childhood (it doesn't matter which) of William Shakespeare.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Our ''stiff'' book is H. James' stories and our ''light'' one Leslie Stephen's ''Hours in a Library'' 3rd series. He is so pleasant after all that subtlety.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
