Review [of Peter Rawlings\u27 \u3cem\u3eHenry James and the Abuse of the Past\u3c/em\u3e]

[...] the abuse of the past becomes in James\u27s hands an art of fiction and the framework of an autobiography (67-68). According to Rawlings, Henry James\u27s late fiction specializes in constructing, within the volatile framework of philosophies of time then current, decadent mutations of America\u27s vanishing dreamers, characters arrested . . . by the forlorn realization that \u27we shall never be again as we were!\u27 (141-42)

Henry James Rides Again

This essay explores Henry James\u27s friendship with Alice Bartlett, a favorite companion in equestrian adventures during James\u27s 1873 residence in Rome. Reading James\u27s travel essay Roman Rides in the context of the mutual friendship of James, Bartlett, and the Emersons suggests that Bartlett profoundly influenced James, albeit in oblique, unacknowledged, and sometimes belated ways. Roman Rides, to which Bartlett provided impetus, presents a textual response to the Roman Campagna that reflects James\u27s early engagement with Emersonian Transcendentalism. This response reverberates, in transmuted form, in the fiction of the late, modern James, as revealed in the tale The Great Good Place