This tale is among Henry James’s shortest. It expresses, with characteristic overtones of the unheimlich (uncanny), his opinion, becoming increasingly strong in the late 1890s, that an artist’s ‘life’ is their surviving work and that the personal circumstances and actions of its creator are not to be picked over after their death.

In the The real right thing both the putative biographer, a journalist who was friends with the author, and the author’s wife, who would like to see him commemorated in some way (compare her with the wife in The abasement of the Northmores), find themselves gradually turned from the idea of publishing a Life. The spirit of the author, who died unexpectedly and relatively young, without leaving definite instructions, but who had expressed his disapproval of biographies, seems to take a hand in proceedings, first apparently assisting but then hindering the work.

Within the confines of this short piece, James obviously cannot analyse in depth the two living characters’ feelings, and so, as in the famous The turn of the screw written a couple of years earlier, we remain unsure as to whether they actually see the ghost or whether they imagine him from their unconscious. Decide for yourself by reading the tale now.

For details of the text sources and subsequent critical discussion see the bibliography. No problems were encountered while editing the source text for its presentation here, but full details of the textual history can be found on a separate page in case you are interested.

Adrian Dover