|
|
|
your guide to this Henry James websiteby Adrian Dover |
This guide to the contents of the Ladder is provided to give newcomers, especially, a descriptive overview of what is available: because of the five-year history of the previous incarnation of the site, there is a fair number of features and facilities here already. In addition to the summary of the parts of the site there are some hints and tips on technical matters.
The major part of the contents of the Ladder comprise electronic ‘editions’ of a selection of Henry James’s works. You can think of these as online versions of the modern paperback editions of literary classics – as well as the text, carefully edited from a single source, there are :
Whereas in a printed edition all these elements are presented sequentially – paperback publishers not usually wanting to run to the expense of typesetting footnotes on the text pages! – in the electronic environment of the world-wide web all the elements can be interrelated. Therefore the display of a text on the Ladder has three frames, from left to right: a menu, with the main elements listed for instant access; a broader central text frame, for the introduction, text, textual note, synopsis and bibliography; and a note frame, in which links in the text or other central page ‘pop up’ so that you can read the note in conjuction with the text to which it refers. Pages such as the textual note and synopses, and sometimes individual notes, have references to particular points in the text and these are hotlinked so you can get there with a click. You can always revert to your previous page with your browser’s ‘back’ button. Sometimes notes have further notes, which will appear in the same, right-hand, frame: to save going back through several of these, to clear the note frame and stop it distracting you, there is a ‘close note’ button on each, which will reload the blank note.
Most of the texts here are fiction, covering novels, tales and plays. So far I have only tackled novels which are not available electronically elsewhere and, while my ultimate aim is to present editions of all the tales in the source collections to which I have access, I am, again, tackling first the ones which are not otherwise available. The plays I have edited are related to one of the tales and are not intended to be the start of a full collection. In addition to the fiction here, I am currently working on the prefaces James wrote for his ‘definitive’ New York edition of 1907-1909: surprisingly, in light of their continued relevance to literary criticism, only a few of these have been available on the web before.
Finally, of course, it’s not quite so easy to ‘flip through’ an electronic edition, hence the provision of the chapter by chapter synopses – just don’t make them a substitute for reading the texts!
As an adjunct to the editions on the Ladder, I have used the computer to generate a single-word concordance to the fiction texts here. For each word this shows the number of occurrences and the texts including it (with links to take you to the text and search for the word in context).
Henry James’s surviving notebooks have been published in two editions, in 1947 and 1987 (details are in the bibliography). Despite indexing many of the references in the text, neither edition contains a index of the possible names for characters which James jotted down in occasional lists. I have compiled the missing index and made it available online here, now including notes showing where names were actually used by James.
This index enables you to track down a printed text of any of James’s tales, which have appeared in many and various different collections over the ninety years since his death. To the extent that my knowledge allows, the details show which of James’s own ‘authorised’ versions of the text is reprinted: with his habit of revising for each new edition during his lifetime there can be up to five versions of the text and it is not always easy to find out, without checking a volume, which one a particular editor has chosen.
There are a few ‘one off’ pages here too. One you may find useful is a page of suggestions of works which I recommend if you are new to James’s work and want to start reading him. Other pages are adjuncts to the rest of the site, comprising :
Reading text online can be wearing on the eyes, so here are two suggestions to help you :
To jazz up the look of the titles a little, download a swish titling font which was supplied with Windows NT but not with more recent versions. The font is called Matura MT Script and you can download it here and then follow the installation instructions below. Another font I originally acquired with Windows NT has become my preferred text font because it has a much less ‘lumpy’ look than Times New Roman or some of the other alternatives. It is Century Schoolbook and it is available at a number of places: UCF, WWU and Spain, plus a self-installing executable. To install a font file on a Micros**t Windows PC :
If you want to avoid being distracted by the underlining of the linked words, particularly in the etexts on this site, you can turn it off in your browser:
Opera 6 :
select ‘File-Preferences’, click ‘Fonts and colors’ then
‘My link style’ and remove the ticks from ‘Underline’ in
both the ‘Not visited’ and ‘Visited’ sections
Mozilla Firefox :
select ‘Tools-Options’, then in the ‘General’ section find
‘Fonts & Colors’ and remove the tick from ‘Underline
links’
Mozilla/Netscape :
find the ‘Preferences’ option on the ‘File’ or
‘Edit’ menu, then in the ‘Appearance’ category find
‘Colors’ and remove the tick from ‘Underline links’
MS IE6 :
select ‘Tools-Internet options’, click the ‘Advanced’ tab
then look for the ‘Underline links’ heading in the Browsing section
of the list and change the selected option to ‘hover’ or
‘never’ according to taste
You’ll still be able to see whether there is a link on a word or phrase which puzzles or intrests you by looking for the status line message or the floating text which appear when you put the mouse pointer over a link.
this guide
© 2004
part of
the Ladder : a Henry James website