HENRY JAMES AND THE SECOND EMPIRE
LEGENDA
LEGENDA, founded in 1995 by the European Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford, is now a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge. Titles range from medieval texts to contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modern humanities, including works on Arabic, Catalan, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish literature. An Editorial Board of distinguished academic specialists works in collaboration with leading scholarly bodies such as the Society for French Studies and the British Comparative Literature Association.
The Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) encourages and promotes advanced study and research in the field of the modern humanities, especially modern European languages and literature, including English, and also cinema. It also aims to break down the barriers between scholars working in different disciplines and to maintain the unity of humanistic scholarship in the face of increasing specialization. The Association fulfils this purpose primarily through the publication of journals, bibliographies, monographs and other aids to research.
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Editorial Board
Chairman
Professor Martin McLaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford
Professor John Batchelor, University of Newcastle (English)
Professor Malcolm Cook, University of Exeter (French)
Professor Colin Davis, Royal Holloway University of London (Modern Literature, Film and Theory)
Professor Robin Fiddian,Wadham College, Oxford (Spanish)
Professor Paul Garner, University of Leeds (Spanish)
Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret, Queen Mary University of London (French)
Professor Catriona Kelly, New College, Oxford (Russian)
Professor Martin Maiden, Trinity College, Oxford (Linguistics)
Professor Peter Matthews, St John's College, Cambridge (Linguistics)
Dr Stephen Parkinson, Linacre College, Oxford (Portuguese)
Professor Ritchie Robertson, St John's College, Oxford (German)
Professor Lesley Sharpe, University of Exeter (German)
Professor David Shepherd, University of Sheffield (Russian)
Professor Alison Sinclair, Clare College, Cambridge (Spanish)
Professor David Treece, King's College London (Portuguese)
Professor Diego Zancani, Balliol College, Oxford (Italian)
Managing Editor
Dr Graham Nelson
41 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JF, UK
legenda@mhra.org.uk
www.legenda.mhra.org.uk
STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Editorial Committee
Professor Peter France, University of Edinburgh (Chairman)
Professor Stephen Bann, University of Bristol
Dr Elinor Shaffer, School of Advanced Study, London
Studies in Comparative Literature are produced in close collaboration with the British Comparative Literature Association, and range widely across comparative and theoretical topics in literary and translation studies, accommodating research at the interface between different artistic media and between the humanities and the sciences.
Published in This Series
- Breeches and Metaphysics: Thackeray's German Discourse, by S. S. Prawer
- Hlderlin and the Dynamics of Translation, by Charlie Louth
- Aeneas Takes the Metro: The Presence of Virgil in Twentieth-Century French Literature, by Fiona Cox
- Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View of Science 17801955, by Peter D. Smith
- Marguerite Yourcenar: Reading the Visual, by Nigel Saint
- Treny: The Laments of Kochanowski, translated by Adam Czerniawski and with an introduction by Donald Davie
- Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and Arabic Poetry, by Richard Serrano
- The Anatomy of Laughter, edited by Toby Garfitt, Edith McMorran and Jane Taylor
- Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the fin de sicle, by Richard Hibbitt
- The Fantastic in France and Russia in the Nineteenth Century: In Pursuit of Hesitation, by Claire Whitehead
- Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and Greece, by Dimitris Papanikolaou
- Wanderers Across Language: Exile in Irish and Polish Literature of the Twentieth Century, by Kinga Olszewska
- Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England 17831830, by Alison E. Martin
- Henry James and the Second Empire, by Angus Wrenn
- Platonic Coleridge, by James Vigus
Henry James and the Second Empire
ANGUS WRENN
Studies in Comparative Literature 14
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
2009
First published 2009
Published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
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LEGENDA is an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
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Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2009
ISBN 9-781-906540-07-4 (hbk)
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Contents
Guide
this book is dedicated to my mother and to the memory of my father
Among many acknowledgements I must first express the great debt of thanks I owe to Professor Janet Bately FBA and Professor Leonee Ormond, and also Professor Clive Bush and Professor John Stokes at King's College, London. Professor Philip Horne of University College London, and Professor Adrian Poole of Trinity College Cambridge made many further useful suggestions and comments. Professor Joseph J Wiesenfarth has been unstinting in his generosity throughout the writing of this book, while the assistance provided by Dr Olga Soboleva has been unfailingly valuable, and indeed in the compilation of the index indispensable. I should also like to record my gratitude to Mr Alan Judd for his sympathetic encouragement over a number of years, to Elaine Kilmurray and to Richard Ormond, for many insights into the French nineteenth century artistic milieu, and to the late Mrs Olive Elliott. I am grateful to the Modern Humanities Research Association for the financial assistance they have made available which has made possible publication of this book. Dr Graham Nelson and Richard Correll at Legenda were helpful and patient in equal measure in finally seeing the book into type. Above all I must thank Dr Elinor Shaffer FBA for nurturing this project and for the enthusiasm she has brought to the study of James within the field of comparative literature.