Maud-Evelyn

The soft side / by Henry James. - London : Methuen, 1900. - 391 p. ; 20 cm. – pages 334-372

The soft side / by Henry James. - New York : Macmillan, 1900. - v, 326 p. ; 20 cm. – pages 279-310

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 book publication on each side of the Atlantic: in Britain on 1900-08-30 (3000 copies, retailing at 6/-) and in America towards the end of September (2800 copies at $1.50)

commentaries and discussions

A reader’s guide to Henry James / by S. Gorley Putt. - London : Thames & Hudson, 1966. - 432 p.; 22 cm. – pages 291-292

summarises the plot of this ‘mawkish variation on the theme of avoiding wedlock’

‘James’s Maud-Evelyn: source, allusion, and meaning’ by Mario L. D’Avanzo
in : Iowa English bulletin   vol. 13, 1968, pages 24-33

‘The structural analysis of literature: the tales of Henry James’ by Tzvetan Todorov (translated from the French)
in : Structuralism: an introduction; Wolfson College lectures 1972 / edited by David Robey. - Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1973. - ISBN 0-19-874012-3 – pages 73-103

substantially the same article appears, in a different translation as :

‘The secret of narrative’ by Tzvetan Todorov (translated from the French by Richard Howard)
in : The poetics of prose / by Tzvetan Todorov. - Oxford : Blackwell, 1977. - ISBN 0-631-18230-6 – pages 143-178

Maud-Evelyn is discussed on pages 89-90 (Clarendon) or 162-164 (Blackwell) as part of Todorov’s exposition of the central absences in a large number of tales; among many points, he notes how many of the tales’ titles name a character who is missing from the story: Sir Dominick Ferrand, Nona Vincent, etc.; he sees this as James’s ‘figure in the carpet’: the ‘tales are based on the quest for an absolute and absent cause.’

‘Henry James’s Maud-Evelyn: classic folie à deux’ by Neal B. Houston
in : Research studies (ISSN 0043-0838)   vol. 41, 1973, pages 28-41
apparently reprinted in : Real : the journal of liberal arts   vol. 21 i, 1996, pages 63-73

‘Henry James’s Maud-Evelyn and the web of consciousness’ by Gennaro A. Santangelo
in : Amerikastudien   vol. 20 i, 1975, 45-54

‘A source for James’s Maud-Evelyn in Henry Harland’s The house of Eulalie’ by Adeline R. Tintner
in : NMAL: Notes on modern American literature   vol. 7 ii, Fall 1983, item 13

[not available to me]

‘James’s Maud-Evelyn’ by Lyall H. Powers
in : Leon Edel and literary art / edited by Lyall H. Powers, assisted by Clare Virginia Eby. - Ann Arbor, MI : University Microfilms International Research Press, 1988. - (Studies in modern literature; 84). - ISBN 0-8357-1839-5 – pages 117-124

[not available to me]

‘Henry James’s Maud-Evelyn: ménage à trois fantastique’ by Richard Gage
in : The shape of the fantastic : selected essays from the Seventh international conference on the Fantastic in the arts / edited by Olena H. Saciuk. - New York : Greenwood Press, 1990. - ISBN 0-313-26198-9 – pages 67-73

[not available to me]

Portraying the lady: technologies of gender in the short stories of Henry James / Donatella Izzo. - Lincoln, NB ; London : University of Nebraska Press, 2001. - ISBN 0-8032-2503-2 – pages 127-133 : ‘Epilogue 1 – Woman as museum: Maud-Evelyn’

an exploration of the multiple layers of absence in the situation and its development and in James’s (re)presentation of it