Travels with Henry James

September 26, 2016
Published on the 100th anniversary of the author’s death, this collection of James’s less touted writings—his travel essays originally published in the Nation—transports readers to America and Europe in the 1870s. New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg and critic Michael Anesko (Monopolizing the Master) contribute the foreword and introduction, respectively; both emphasize how James’s ambition, curiosity, and headstrong assessments of people and places merged in these essays, which provided a sturdy foundation for the rest of his career, making him recognizable to readers and greatly influencing his later writings. After this opening, readers plunge into the world of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in the late summer of 1870, forgetting automobiles and iPhones, though the old, drawn-out syntax requires some patience from those unaccustomed to it. James begins with a distinction that echoes throughout the rest of the collection: the difference between one’s imagination of a place and the reality. “There is an essential indignity in indefiniteness: you cannot imagine the especial poignant interest of details and accidents. They give more to the imagination than they receive from it.” Readers will love being privy to the picturesque realities of the American Northeast, and to James’s detailed observations of daily life during in 1872 during the summer he spent in traveling across Europe. James devotees will find that his essays are delightful, vivid, and generally uplifting.

Starred review from September 15, 2016
The great master of American literature conquered fiction, of course, but also literary criticism (described by New Yorker staff writer Hendrik Hertzberg in his foreword as a body of work unmatched for filigreed quality as well as sheer quantity ). But another significant, if often overlooked, component of James' oeuvre is his travel writing, presented here in what Hertzberg calls a collection of Jamesian postcards from his travels around the U.S. and through western Europe. In James' day, There was a healthy market for travel writing, and these pieces found appreciative editors and readers. Generally, James' travel writing was concentrated in the early years of his career, which means that his trademark elaborate writing style is less pronounced here. Art, architecture, and history consume his travel prose, and every one of his carefully composed sentences reveals his excellenceeven nimblenessin detailed remembrance. ( I can wish the traveler no better fortune than to stroll forth in the early evening with as large a reserve of ignorance as my own, and treat himself to an hour of discoveries. ) This is a fundamental selection for all public library travel collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)