Volume 36, Number 19 · December 7, 1989
The Master at Home
By John Bayley
A Ring of Conspirators: Henry James and His Literary Circle, 1895–1915
by Miranda Seymour
Houghton Mifflin, 327 pp., $19.95
Thinking in Henry James
by Sharon Cameron
The University of Chicago Press, 200 pp., $29.95
The Pop World of Henry James: From Fairy Tales to Science Fiction
by Adeline R. Tintner
UMI Research Press, 317 pp., $44.95
'I'm always sorry when I hear of your reading anything of mine, and always hope you won't—you seem to me so constitutionally unable to enjoy it.' Thus Henry James to his brother William, permitting himself one of those moments of fraternal frankness which were always succeeded by a fondly penitent resumption of the younger brother's grateful dependence on the status and authority of the elder. On one occasion William even went so far as to suggest he should write Henry's books for him, in his own forceful, no-nonsense prose. 'Publish it in my name, I will acknowledge it, and give you half the proceeds.' Ingestion of the junior by the dominant sibling could hardly go further than that.
Review, 2391 words
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