Henry James

The finer grain

(collection, published 1910)

Introduction

by Adrian Dover

This volume was the last collection of tales published by James. When compiling it, in April and May 1910, he was enduring a period of depression, brought on, fundamentally, by overwork on, and poor sales figures of, his New York edition in 1907‒1909. His brother William was already suffering the illness which would lead to his death in August and the two travelled to Bad Nauheim in Germany in June when William took the ‘cure’… without apparent benefit.

Against this background, Henry assembled the five short stories he had written and published since volume 18 of the New York edition went to press: that was the final volume of the twenty-four which contained tales. Three of the five sprang directly from his renewed acquaintance with America in 1904‒1905 and the other two, set in England, are equally pessimistic: Mora Montravers even amidst its humour and The bench of desolation from its title onwards. Thus, with experience of the way the new century was developing and with advancing years – he was now in his late 60s – James produced a rather down-beat collection, with garish light thrown on some unappetizing characters. However, on the plus side the new approaches and new themes mean that readers coming to The finer grain with a knowledge of earlier collections have no need to fear finding a writer played-out and repeating himself. Another result of this distinctive late turn is that critical comment has taken more notice of the book as a collection than it has taken of James’s earlier volumes of tales, even though one feels that no less care was expended on compiling those previous efforts.

You can view sample page images of the original edition by selecting from the menu on the left – the first page(s) of tales have links on to my edition of that tale. I have also provided a bibliography containing full details of the publication and subsequent critical discussion of the contents as a whole. To read any of the tales in their edition on this site, you can either click over the appropriate title on the illustration of the contents page, or you can follow links from the general menu of editions.