Henry James

Summersoft

(written 1895)

Introduction

by Adrian Dover

This one-act play was written in the summer of 1895, just a few months after James’s ‘disastrous’ foray into London theatre with Guy Domville, which was booed at its premiere in the January of that year. The impetus came from the distinguished actress Ellen Terry. She sympathised with James’s experience over Domville (in which her sister had acted) and invited him to consider writing a one- or two-act play for her to take on an American tour, bravely wanting to ‘do an American woman’ there. Terry had the manuscript by the end of August but, although enthusiastic and prompt in payment, she never did produce the play and, three years later James reclaimed the script to turn it into a long short story, Covering End, to complement The turn of the screw in the book The two magics (1898).

Later still, James consented to re-convert the story into a play, this time in three acts, for the actor-manager Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, who had read The two magics on publication and approached the author to make it a vehicle for his wife Gertrude Elliott (American born) and himself. He was rebuffed in 1899 but renewed his request in 1907 and was successful the second time. Although the Forbes-Robertsons produced the play in the provinces, the sudden success of Jerome K. Jerome’s The passing of the third floor back meant that a London premiere for The high bid was postponed until five low-key matinees in 1909. If you are interested in comparing James’s three texts, you can do so with my parallel texts edition, but please note that your browser will need to run JavaScript and you probably need a minimum 1024 × 768 display, with the browser window maximized, to be able to see enough of each text to make it worthwhile. Try it though: it’s very enlightening!

For details of the text source and the chosen playscript layout see my note about the text. Otherwise just start reading.