Details
JAMES, Henry (1843-1916). The American Scene. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907. 8°. Original red buckram, lettered in gilt, top edge gilt (unevenly faded, a few dark spots). PRESENTATION COPY TO F.M. HUEFFER, front free endpaper inscribed, "To Ford Madox Hueffer Henry James January 31st 1907".
FIRST EDITION, consisting of 1500 copies at 12/6. James had landed in New York on 30 August, 1904. Had Hardy not already made famous use of the title, he would have called his book The Return of the Native, for it was twenty years since he had stepped onto American soil. The impressions which a much altered Manhattan made upon him in the spring of 1905 were recalled in "three closely written and evocative chapters". As Edel comments, "he cared for 'the terrible town', cared for it deeply, as one born in it; and it therefore hurt him all the more that man could create so blindly and so crudely the foundation of inevitable 'blight' (Henry James: The Master, p. 301). Hueffer had visited New York in 1906, and was to publish New York Essays and New York is not America in 1927. Edel & Laurence A63.
FIRST EDITION, consisting of 1500 copies at 12/6. James had landed in New York on 30 August, 1904. Had Hardy not already made famous use of the title, he would have called his book The Return of the Native, for it was twenty years since he had stepped onto American soil. The impressions which a much altered Manhattan made upon him in the spring of 1905 were recalled in "three closely written and evocative chapters". As Edel comments, "he cared for 'the terrible town', cared for it deeply, as one born in it; and it therefore hurt him all the more that man could create so blindly and so crudely the foundation of inevitable 'blight' (Henry James: The Master, p. 301). Hueffer had visited New York in 1906, and was to publish New York Essays and New York is not America in 1927. Edel & Laurence A63.
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