The soft side / by Henry James. – London : Methuen, 1900. – 391 p. ; 20 cm. — pages 179-205
The soft side / by Henry James. – New York : Macmillan, 1900. – v, 326 p. ; 20 cm. — pages 150-171
contents: The great good place; Europe; Paste; The real right thing; The great condition; The tree of knowledge; The abasement of the Northmores; The given case; John Delavoy; The third person; Maud-Evelyn; Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie
containing the first publication of the tale, which did not appear in a serial/magazine
The author of Beltraffio; The middle years; Greville Fane and other tales / by Henry James. – New York : Scribner’s ; London : Macmillan, 1908. – (The novels and tales of Henry James, New York edition ; vol. 16) — pages 193-222
contents: The author of Beltraffio; The middle years; Greville Fane; Broken wings; The tree of knowledge; The abasement of the Northmores; The great good place; Four meetings; Paste; Europe; Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie; Fordham Castle
for subsequent reprints of this tale see the
relevant page
of my index to Henry James’s tales in collections.
in addition to the selected criticism listed below, this tale is discussed
(in greater or lesser detail) in the general works on James’s tales
and fiction, which I have listed on a
separate page;
those works are annotated here only when I’ve tracked them down and
they offer significant insights
‘Preface’ by Henry James
in: The author of Beltraffio; The middle years; Greville Fane and other
tales(New York edition), – see
above;
reprinted in : The art of the novel: critical prefaces / by
Henry James, with an introduction by Richard P. Blackmur. –
New York ; London : Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934. –
xli, 348 p.; 22 cm. — pages 234-235
relevant text available on this web-site
‘The abasement of Mrs Warren Hope’ by Robert L. Gale
in: PMLA: publications of the Modern Language Association of
America vol. 78, 1963, 98-102
Gale finds the central consciousness of the tale, Mrs Hope, to be one of James’s unreliable narrators (even though this is not a first person narrative!) and decides that Lord Northmore really was a great man and that Warren Hope was an ‘unexceptional, long-suffering’ (= hope-less!?) man
A reader’s guide to Henry James / by S. Gorley Putt. – London : Thames & Hudson, 1966 – pages 234-235
(yes, those page numbers are correct, it’s merely coincidence that they are the same as the preface’s pages in Blackmur’s edition!) now I revisit it, I find that my comments on this tale parallel those of Putt, who also describes it as a ‘fable’ and raises the question of whether James started to consider destruction of his papers before his death at about the time of writing it
well, that’s it... I can’t find any later indexed work
selective bibliography and critical commentaries
© 2002
part of an etext edition of
The abasement of the Northmores
on
the Ladder : a Henry James website