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Novels 1886–1890: The Princess Casamassima / The Reverberator / The Tragic Muse
The three novels in this Library of America volume from Henry James’s middle period explore some historical and social dilemmas that belong as much to our time as to his own. The Princess Casamassima was published in 1886, a year that saw riots of the unemployed in London. It is a political novel in which anarchists and terrorists conspire within a fin de siècle world of opulence and glamour. The action ranges from palaces to slums, from London to Paris to Venice and back again. The novel’s hero, Hyacinth Robinson, is torn between his loyalty to revolutionary causes—for which he is about to commit an act of violence that may cost him his life—and his taste for the artistic side of aristocratic culture, represented in part by the beautiful, wealthy, compassionate, and yet deceptive Princess of the title. Possibly to save Hyacinth, she becomes romantically involved with his fellow conspirator Paul Muniment, a calculating political operative, idealistic and treacherous by turns. Assassination plots, sexual betrayals, murder, suicide, and the fierce play of conflicting loyalties—all these bring into play an intricate abundance of attendant figures, like the rakish Captain Sholto and the appealing but faithless Millicent Henning.
The Reverberator (1888) is a swiftly paced comic novel named after a newspaper that caters to the American public’s appetite for the “society news of every quarter of the globe.” Francie Dosson, the free-spirited daughter of a wealthy Boston family, innocently provides gossip to George Flack, a “young commercial American” who writes for the paper. His published report imperils her engagement to Gaston Probert, whose family is outraged by the airing of its secrets. James portrays the collision of easily shocked Old World propriety and self-assured New World naiveté with benevolent affection and spirited delight.
The Tragic Muse (1890) explores with a topical realism not usually found in James the conflicts between art and politics, society and the Bohemian life. It does so with dazzling glimpses of Parisian theater and of London aestheticism, as articulated by the flamboyant and idealistic Gabriel Nash. At its center are four superbly drawn characters. The fascinating Miriam Rooth is an actress of overwhelming egotistic vitality and dedication to her art. Her suitor, the diplomat Peter Sherringham, is impassioned by her theatrical talent even while asking her to sacrifice it for his career. Nick Dormer faces a similar predicament in his engagement to the rich Julia Dallow, who wants him to forgo his painting so as to make use of her fortune in pursuit of his career in Parliament. Full of witty talk and vividly dramatic scenes, the novel includes a vast array of characters such as the impressive political matriarch Lady Dormer. Perhaps more than any of his novels, it attests to James’s recognition of the costs of any dedication, like his own, to creative achievement.
The Reverberator (1888) is a swiftly paced comic novel named after a newspaper that caters to the American public’s appetite for the “society news of every quarter of the globe.” Francie Dosson, the free-spirited daughter of a wealthy Boston family, innocently provides gossip to George Flack, a “young commercial American” who writes for the paper. His published report imperils her engagement to Gaston Probert, whose family is outraged by the airing of its secrets. James portrays the collision of easily shocked Old World propriety and self-assured New World naiveté with benevolent affection and spirited delight.
The Tragic Muse (1890) explores with a topical realism not usually found in James the conflicts between art and politics, society and the Bohemian life. It does so with dazzling glimpses of Parisian theater and of London aestheticism, as articulated by the flamboyant and idealistic Gabriel Nash. At its center are four superbly drawn characters. The fascinating Miriam Rooth is an actress of overwhelming egotistic vitality and dedication to her art. Her suitor, the diplomat Peter Sherringham, is impassioned by her theatrical talent even while asking her to sacrifice it for his career. Nick Dormer faces a similar predicament in his engagement to the rich Julia Dallow, who wants him to forgo his painting so as to make use of her fortune in pursuit of his career in Parliament. Full of witty talk and vividly dramatic scenes, the novel includes a vast array of characters such as the impressive political matriarch Lady Dormer. Perhaps more than any of his novels, it attests to James’s recognition of the costs of any dedication, like his own, to creative achievement.
1296 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1890
11 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Henry James
4,557 books3,942 followersHenry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 1, 2015
These are some of the more "worldly" of James's novels, and probably more accessible than his later works, but I loved them just the same. "The Princess" verges on a potboiler, and it doesn't always work, but I admire James for going so far out of his comfort zone--and of course the quality of his writing, and the depths to which he goes in probing the subtleties of our relationships with one another, are in a class by themselves.
August 16, 2021
POSSIBLE SPOILERS.
Disclaimer: Because this Library Of America volume, which contains three novels, is the one which contains the most definitive text of THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA available, I stress that it is the only one of the three in this volume I've read. Goodreads reviews can only be posted if the reviewer has clicked "I'm finished." So, while I have finished THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA, I have not read THE REVERBERATOR or THE TRAGIC MUSE.
THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA was published in 1886, relatively early in Henry James's career. He was forty-three years old, had been a published novelist for almost fifteen years and had already written an unquestioned masterpiece, A PORTRAIT OF A LADY. He died in 1916, well established as a writer of high merit. THE TURN OF THE SCREW, written in 1898, is easily the archetypal novella. James is an iconic author with a wide readership more than a century after his death. But this book is James's attempt to get out of himself. He commandeers Dickens's properties while venturing into Dostoevsky's territory. Whenever his main character, Hyacinth Robinson, is the focus, James must suppress his obvious desire to satirize the underground. He anticipates Conrad when he characterizes the players in the secret society Hyacinth is lured into. The Princess with whom he is enraptured is plausible, but Hyacinth's sexless love for her is not. The deadbeats who argue at the secret political meetings Hyacinth attends are plausible, but their trust in hyacinth is not. I think James had every element he needed in order to make this book soar, but he undercut his effort in order to pay tribute to Dickens. We learn at the start that Hyacinth, a working-class youth living with the impoverished seamstress who adopts him at birth, is actually the son of a lord. That isn't necessarily Dickensian, but his funny name is. James, however, doesn't know how to devise a funny name, let alone one which would convey something about the character it is given to. The name Hyacinth Robinson conjures up no images, the way such names as Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge or Uncle Pumblechook do. There is another character in this book who is an impossibly good person. She has a mysterious malady from birth which is never specified. James finally lets loose with what is definitely his own thought about her when two characters both say to each other, "I've never liked her." But, as I've said, James is paying tribute to Dickens and not parodying him. For 99 per cent of the book, Hyacinth is Henry James's sincere effort at giving the reader a Dickens hero. But he is also trying to show how the underground works. When Paul Muniment, Hyacinth's idol (and the brother of the over-angelic invalid Hyacinth secretly despises) talks about the rigged game of society, James actually shows he knows how revolutionists talk. But Hyacinth has to be made to be Muniment's rival for the affections of the Princess, and James's unwillingness to specify a sexual dynamic undercuts the portrayal of Muniment. (Note the use of a funny name here, too. It's weird but not weird in an intriguing way. James can't master Dickens's naming trick.) ONLY Dickens can make us root for a fundamentally bland figure. David Copperfield has no human characteristics that I can remember (except for his secretly wishing his first wife would go ahead and die, which Dickens, as an author, clearly wants her to do, do-gooding martyr that she is) and Henry James can only make such a character unfathomably dull. Dickens appeals to a reader's sense of foul play. We like David Copperfield because he has been dealt a bad hand. There is no other reason to care about him. But it is, after all, THE reason to care about him. Add to this that James has a conflict: He wishes to imply an entire world of underground activity. His character Paul Muniment even says that world exists, everywhere, unnoticed, so it's clear that James is aware of this way of thinking. But James's odd super-patriotism comes to the fore, preventing James from detailing the seediness he knows is a dominant quality in the lives of anarchists. Hence, Hyacinth periodically makes proclamations about British backbone. Again, James ALMOST gets somewhere in his depiction of a working-class woman who sometimes socializes with Hyacinth. She is a realistic version of Eliza Dolittle. But James wants us to care about Hyacinth's relationship with the Princess, an aristocrat.
I have not stressed that most of this book is written with great care. But it is the great care of a master craftsman who has forgotten the shape of the object he's creating.
THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA has everything a book needs. But Henry James attached a donkey's tale to it. He learned from his mistake and wrote several uncompromising masterpieces after this. If you read this novel, you'll watch a great writer fall on his ass for five-hundred and fifty-six pages.
Disclaimer: Because this Library Of America volume, which contains three novels, is the one which contains the most definitive text of THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA available, I stress that it is the only one of the three in this volume I've read. Goodreads reviews can only be posted if the reviewer has clicked "I'm finished." So, while I have finished THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA, I have not read THE REVERBERATOR or THE TRAGIC MUSE.
THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA was published in 1886, relatively early in Henry James's career. He was forty-three years old, had been a published novelist for almost fifteen years and had already written an unquestioned masterpiece, A PORTRAIT OF A LADY. He died in 1916, well established as a writer of high merit. THE TURN OF THE SCREW, written in 1898, is easily the archetypal novella. James is an iconic author with a wide readership more than a century after his death. But this book is James's attempt to get out of himself. He commandeers Dickens's properties while venturing into Dostoevsky's territory. Whenever his main character, Hyacinth Robinson, is the focus, James must suppress his obvious desire to satirize the underground. He anticipates Conrad when he characterizes the players in the secret society Hyacinth is lured into. The Princess with whom he is enraptured is plausible, but Hyacinth's sexless love for her is not. The deadbeats who argue at the secret political meetings Hyacinth attends are plausible, but their trust in hyacinth is not. I think James had every element he needed in order to make this book soar, but he undercut his effort in order to pay tribute to Dickens. We learn at the start that Hyacinth, a working-class youth living with the impoverished seamstress who adopts him at birth, is actually the son of a lord. That isn't necessarily Dickensian, but his funny name is. James, however, doesn't know how to devise a funny name, let alone one which would convey something about the character it is given to. The name Hyacinth Robinson conjures up no images, the way such names as Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge or Uncle Pumblechook do. There is another character in this book who is an impossibly good person. She has a mysterious malady from birth which is never specified. James finally lets loose with what is definitely his own thought about her when two characters both say to each other, "I've never liked her." But, as I've said, James is paying tribute to Dickens and not parodying him. For 99 per cent of the book, Hyacinth is Henry James's sincere effort at giving the reader a Dickens hero. But he is also trying to show how the underground works. When Paul Muniment, Hyacinth's idol (and the brother of the over-angelic invalid Hyacinth secretly despises) talks about the rigged game of society, James actually shows he knows how revolutionists talk. But Hyacinth has to be made to be Muniment's rival for the affections of the Princess, and James's unwillingness to specify a sexual dynamic undercuts the portrayal of Muniment. (Note the use of a funny name here, too. It's weird but not weird in an intriguing way. James can't master Dickens's naming trick.) ONLY Dickens can make us root for a fundamentally bland figure. David Copperfield has no human characteristics that I can remember (except for his secretly wishing his first wife would go ahead and die, which Dickens, as an author, clearly wants her to do, do-gooding martyr that she is) and Henry James can only make such a character unfathomably dull. Dickens appeals to a reader's sense of foul play. We like David Copperfield because he has been dealt a bad hand. There is no other reason to care about him. But it is, after all, THE reason to care about him. Add to this that James has a conflict: He wishes to imply an entire world of underground activity. His character Paul Muniment even says that world exists, everywhere, unnoticed, so it's clear that James is aware of this way of thinking. But James's odd super-patriotism comes to the fore, preventing James from detailing the seediness he knows is a dominant quality in the lives of anarchists. Hence, Hyacinth periodically makes proclamations about British backbone. Again, James ALMOST gets somewhere in his depiction of a working-class woman who sometimes socializes with Hyacinth. She is a realistic version of Eliza Dolittle. But James wants us to care about Hyacinth's relationship with the Princess, an aristocrat.
I have not stressed that most of this book is written with great care. But it is the great care of a master craftsman who has forgotten the shape of the object he's creating.
THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA has everything a book needs. But Henry James attached a donkey's tale to it. He learned from his mistake and wrote several uncompromising masterpieces after this. If you read this novel, you'll watch a great writer fall on his ass for five-hundred and fifty-six pages.
May 13, 2010
"I've imperilled my immortal soul, or at least I've bemuddled my intelligence, by all the things I don't care for that I've tried to do, and all the things I detest that I've tried to be, and all the things I never can be that I've tried to look as if I were--all the appearances and imitations, the pretences and hypocrisies in which I've steeped myself to the eyes; and at the end of it (it serves me right!) my reward is simply to learn that I'm still not half humbug enough!"
If the idiom of this speech were contemporary American English, you'd be likely to guess that it was the confession of a gay man trapped in the closet. It's actually spoken by Nick Dormer in Henry James's novel The Tragic Muse, and though Nick is bemoaning a life led hypocritically, it's not because he's a furtively homosexual man: He's a furtively artistic man who gave up his art (painting) to pursue, quite successfully, a career in politics. The reversal of that decision is just one of the threads--not even the strongest--that you can trace through this story of Paris and London in the late 1880s (the novel appeared as a serial in the Atlantic Monthly from 1889 - 1890).
Though painstaking description of contemporary life is considered the stock in trade of realist novels, the received opinion about James is that, regardless of his categorization among the great realists, his novels pay scant attention to realities so trivial as time and place. Not so. Novels like The Sacred Fount and The Golden Bowl, in which James can make you feel as though you’re alone in the nameless void with a bodiless voice, are a decade and more in the future (these are the books that made him a darling of modernist critics and a precursor of writers like Beckett). But The Tragic Muse, like the other novels he wrote at this stage of his career, expertly deploys the conventions of 19th-century realism, as in this delightful description of Paris in the summer:The official, and most other worlds withdrew from Paris, and the Place de la Concorde, a larger, whiter desert than ever, became, by a reversal of custom, explorable with safety. The Champs Elysees were dusty and rural, with little creaking booths and exhibitions which made a noise like grasshoppers; the Arc de Triomphe threw its cool, sharp shadow for a mile; the Palais de l’Industrie glittered in the light of the long days; the cabmen, in their red waistcoats, dozed in their boxes….
Not only does James give us cabbies in red waistcoats and walks through Paris of GPS precision; we also get a sharply observed look behind the scenes at the London theater world as he chronicles the career of Miriam Rooth, the lady in the title. Miriam and Nick are the budding artists whose lives we follow, and James shows us what they did for Art, and how Art plucks one out of obscurity and trains on her the spotlight of public acclaim while it leads the other from a brilliant public career into the obscurity of a tiny, quiet painter’s studio.
James’s taste in painting can seem laughable today, and his insight into Nick’s craft and practice is rather generalized; but as for the theater, he knew what he was talking about. He wrote many plays and tried hard, again and again, to get them on the stage and keep them there. His characterization of Miriam clearly benefits from his observation of and friendship with theater people (he and the actress Fanny Kemble were close friends). In a book that boasts several brilliantly drawn women, Miriam is the one upon whom James lavishes the most attention. We don’t get inside her head, but Miriam is the center of the book. She’s beautiful, she’s ambitious, she’s smart, she’s honest, she’s frank, she’s free. James lets her steal every scene she’s in.
The book may go on some chapters too long, but page by page you’re less aware of long-windedness than of wonders of wit and intelligence, great dialogue, compelling scenes, and psychological and social acuity. Those who think of James as “polite,” as “nice,” mistake the fastidiousness of his style for Victorian propriety. He casts a cold, experienced eye on the people of "heartless London." There are two mothers in this book who will set your teeth on edge, if not make your hair stand on end. There is “imperative” Julia Dallow, rich and beautiful, as ambitious as Miriam Rooth, but the field of whose ambition, British politics, prevents her from entering the lists herself (she tries to make Nick her champion).
And finally there is Gabriel Nash. In all five volumes of his great biography of James, the only thing Leon Edel cares to mention about The Tragic Muse is what everybody else also mentions: The character of Gabriel Nash is supposedly modeled on Oscar Wilde. That might be something if Gabriel Nash were more than a peripheral character, important and entertaining though he be. But so much in the book is important and entertaining, why put him in the novel’s tagline? As if the novel could only stand up with the help of Oscar's fame. Nash is indeed an Aesthete with a capital A, and if he doesn’t frighten the horses, he certainly frightens Nick’s mother and sisters, who fear he’s somehow polluting their beloved son and brother. Nash makes a splash early in the book with his habit of “premeditated paradox,” and James creates for him an Oscarish monologue on the pitiful claim the theater can make to be called an art. Don’t come to this novel hoping for a roman a clef, never mind the key to Oscar’s bedroom. The Tragic Muse was written when Wilde’s star was rising and the love that dare not speak its name still mum. But to end where I started, doesn’t Nick’s farewell to Nash sound a lot like the amicable breakup of two gay men?
"Vous allez me lacher, I see it coming; and who can blame you?--for I’ve ceased to be in the least spectacular. I had my little hour; it was a great deal, for some people don’t even have that. I’ve given you your curious case and I’ve been generous; I made the drama last for you as long as I could. You’ll ‘slope,’ my dear fellow--you’ll quietly slope; and it will be all right and inevitable, though I shall miss you greatly at first....You rescued me; you converted me…"
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 15, 2011
Since the LOA series puts three novels in one volume note that this is a review of "The Princess Casamassima".
This is not James' greatest novel but I think any James novel is superior to most other writers. While the Princess may be the name in the title the main character is Hyacinth Robinson. Growing up a respectable but poor person in London with a hidden past that indicates greater things Hyacinth represents both the finer and baser things in life. His tragic inability to reconcile these two sides of his personality are the basis of this novel. I love James' writing style, dense as it is. Before movies and television, when the theater was the main live entertainment, a novelist could take the time to establish scenes and characterizations could be nuanced and deep. A James novel is what is best about literature. Even a sub par novel James novel is worth the read.
This is not James' greatest novel but I think any James novel is superior to most other writers. While the Princess may be the name in the title the main character is Hyacinth Robinson. Growing up a respectable but poor person in London with a hidden past that indicates greater things Hyacinth represents both the finer and baser things in life. His tragic inability to reconcile these two sides of his personality are the basis of this novel. I love James' writing style, dense as it is. Before movies and television, when the theater was the main live entertainment, a novelist could take the time to establish scenes and characterizations could be nuanced and deep. A James novel is what is best about literature. Even a sub par novel James novel is worth the read.
May 2, 2015
Please see my reviews of the individual novels in this volume.
December 31, 2019
The Princess Casamissima - finished 07/06/17
The Reverberator - finished 01/13/18
The Tragic Muse - finished 12/30/19
The Reverberator - finished 01/13/18
The Tragic Muse - finished 12/30/19
November 20, 2011
This is for The Reverberator.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews