The Best of O. Henry (Everyman's Library)

Literature & Fiction

Henry, O.

Bigsby, Christopher

Bell, Ian F. A.

United States

Everymans Library

With the publication in 1880 of Washington Square, the great American novelist, short story writer, and critic Henry James forged a new form of fiction, one combining the realism of the European novel with the romanticism of the American tradition. James's story, set in New York City's fashionable Washington Square, where James spent his own boyhood, tells of the shy Catherine Sloper, caught between the demands of her wealthy father, Dr. Austin Sloper, and those of her young suitor, Morris Townsend. This novel of James's early period was written shortly after he settled in London; with the exception of The Bostonians (1866), it is the last of his works to be set in America. Moreover, along with The Europeans (1878), it is one of only two works in which James set his action in a distinct historical past: both novels, written within two years of each other, are located in the America of the 1840s.Despite the significance of Washington Square in James's work, in recent years the novel has been largely neglected, as scholars have focused increasingly on his later writing. This new critical study by Ian F. A. Bell decisively rectifies that situation, providing readers with an outstanding guide to appreciating the novel. "Washington Square inaugurated the shape of modern fiction and was conceived during that transitional moment when the modern economy began to emerge from its nineteenth-century forms," Bell maintains. Tracing the economic and aesthetic changes pervading American society at the time of the novel's action and at the time of its writing, Bell skillfully places the novel in its historical, literary, and critical contexts. What follows is a thoughtful reading of Washington Square that consistently delineates the social and historical forces influencing the novel and the resultant cultural shifts necessitating the kind of innovativeness James brought to his endeavor. A distinctive, well-reasoned presentation of interest to students and scholars alike, Washington Square: Styles of Money represents a decisive contribution to the field.

Washington Square: Styles of Money (Twayne's Masterwork Studies)

History & Criticism

Twayne Pub

Ezra Pound: Tactics for Reading (Critical Studies Series)

Vision+ Press

First published in 1981, Critic as Scientist provides a detailed and scholarly account both of the scientific background and of contemporary artistic issues in its analysis of Ezra Pound's poetics. During the crucial period of his years in London, Ezra Pound was striving to formulate not only a new system of poetics but also a new language through which he could both define the critic's procedure and announce his modernity. It was in science that Pound discovered the vocabulary that became his most characteristic gesture during the literary crises of the time. The use of scientific terminology in his 'propaganda' for a new 'renaissance' belonged, initially, to specifically American modes of aesthetic tradition, as typified by Whistler and aspects of New England transcendentalism. A consideration of popular versions of physics and biology, and of the 'scientific attitude' displayed by such contemporaries as Fenollosa, Hulme, Ford and Eliot, reveals that the major terms and practices of Pound's critical vocabulary were located in the issues of nineteenth and early twentieth-century science. The author has sought to demystify key words in the Poundian vocabulary and has suggested a wider literary and cultural context for the study of Pound's aesthetic theory. This book will be of interest to students of literature.

Critic as Scientist: The modernist poetics of Ezra Pound (Routledge Revivals)

British & Irish

Routledge

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Books by Bell, Ian F. A.