Know Your James

At the end of this month I'll have to decide what I want to study for the next 2 years, possibly 5, possibly my whole life. I don't want to do it. I can't properly explain how much I don't want to do it. So instead of agonizing over choices and all the ways in which they could go wrong, I have decided to do something fun, something to take my mind off things and give me the illusion of a purpose. I am reading Henry James from beginning to end.

Below is a list of his works that I put together from the Blackwell Companion. I will check it against this list as well. There are some differences, most of them coming from the fact that my list has the works in the order they came out, regardless of whether they were published in a newspaper or in book form, but if there are stories I missed I will add them. I will be reading through this list and updating as I go. I already read most of the novels, but rereading is always a joy. It might take me a long time to reach the end, but I hope to stick to it. 

I guess there's more to this than sheer escapism too. I love the internet, but sometimes I feel that it's pulling me in a hundred directions at once and throwing bits of knowledge at me faster than I can digest them. (It is also the only thing that makes this project possible, so don't think I'm bashing it.) I want to read something methodically and really get to know it. So James it is.

The List

1864 - A Tragedy of Error
1865 - The Story of a Year

1866 - A Landscape Painter, A Day of Days

1867 - Poor Richard

1868 - The Story of a Masterpiece, The Romance of Certain Old Clothes

1869 - Gabrielle de Bergerac

1870 - Travelling Companions

1871 - Watch and Ward, A Passionate Pilgrim, Master Eustace

1873 - The Madonna of the Future, The Sweetheart of M. Briseux

1874 - The Last of the Valerii, Mme de Mauves, Eugene Pickering

1875 - Roderick Hudson, A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales, Transatlantic Sketches

1876 - The American

1877 - Four Meetings

1878 - French Poets and Novelists, Daisy Miller, An International Episode, The Europeans, Longstaff's Marriage

1879 - The Pension Beaurepas, Confidence, A Bundle of Letters, Hawthorne

1880 - Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady

1882 - The Point of View

1883 - The Siege of London; Daisy Miller: A Comedy, Portraits of Places

1884 - A Little Tour in France, Lady Barbarina, Pandora, The Author of 'Beltraffio', Georgina's Reasons, A New England Winter, The Art of Fiction

1885 - The Bostonians, Princess Casamassima

1888 - The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Reverbator, The Liar, The Modern Warning, A London Life, The Lesson of the Master, The Patagonia, Partial Portraits

1889 - The Tragic Muse

1891 - The Pupil, Brooksmith, The Marriages, The Chaperon, Sir Edmund Orme, The American: A Comedy in Four Acts

1892 - The Real Thing, The Private Life, Lord Beaupre, Greville Fane, Owen Wingrave

1893 - The Middle Years, Pictures and Text, Essays in London and Elsewhere

1894 - The Death of the Lion, Cotton Fund, Theatricals: Two Comedies, Theatricals: Second Series

1895 - The Next Time, The Altar of the Dead, Guy Domville

1896 - The Figure in the Carpet, Glasses, The Old Things (The Spoils of Poynton), The Way It Came, The Other House

1897 - What Maisie Knew

1898 - The Turn of the Screw, The Awkward Age, In the Cage, The Covering End

1899 - Europe, The Real Right Thing, Paste

1900 - The Great Good Place, Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie, The Tree of Knowledge, The Abasement of the Northmores, Maud-Evelyn, The Faces, Broken Wings

1901 - The Beldonald Holbein, Mrs. Medwin, The Sacred Fount,

1902 - The Wings of the Dove, Flickerbridge, The Story in It

1903 - The Ambassadors, The Beast in the Jungle, The Birthplace, William Wetmore Story and His Friends

1904 - The Golden Bowl, Fordham Castle,

1905 - The Question of Our Speech, The Lesson of Balzac, English Hours

1906 - The Speech of American Women

1907 - The American Scene

1908 - Julia Bride, The Jolly Corner

1909 - Italian Hours, The Velvet Glove, Mora Montravers, Crapy Cornelia, The Bench of Desolation

1910 - Is There a Life after Death, A Round of Visits

1911 - The Outcry

1912 - The Novel in ‘The Ring and the Book’

1913 - A Small Boy and Others

1914 - Notes of a Son and Brother, Notes on Novelists

1915 - The Mind of England at War

1916 - Ivory Tower, The Sense of the Past

1919 - Within the Rim and Other Essays