Volume 41, Number 3 · February 3, 1994
Sons and Brothers
By John Bayley
The Correspondence of William James Vol. I: William & Henry 1861–1884 Vol. II: William & Henry 1885–1896
edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis, edited by Elizabeth M. Berkeley
University of Virginia Press, Vol. 2, 514 pp., each volume $45.00
The Correspondence of Henry James & the House of MacMillan, 1877–1914
edited by Rayburn S. Moore
Louisiana State University Press, 256 pp., $39.95
Henry James: Collected Travel Writings: Vol. 1, Great Britain and America (English Hours, The American Scene, Other Travels) Vol. 2, The Continent (A Little Tour in France, Italian Hours, Other Travels)
Library of America, Vol. 2, 845 pp., each volume $35.00
Henry James, Lettere a Miss Allen (Letters to Miss Allen)
Rosellina Archinto Editore (in English and Italian), 171 pp., $20.00
The end of Philip Larkin's great and gloomy poem 'Aubade' is anachronistic, but in the happiest sense. Without looking back, or appearing to do so, it re-creates what for the poet had never come to an end; a world in which letters were greedily received and faithfully dispatched; in which the telephone was an expensive and barbarous mode of communication for business use (in Larkin's dawn poem 'telephones crouch, getting ready to ring/In locked-up offices'): and letters, here the household remedy relied on to combat the ills of daily existence. For poets or artists letters could be an extension of their art by other means; a way of exploring their own individuality and bringing it home to others.
Review, 4411 words
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