This exciting and original monograph re-evaluates the final decade of Henry James' creative life. In 1904–5, the elderly expatriate made an extensive tour of North America, an experience which both dismayed and liberated him. Through close literary analysis of his later writing, Peter Collister recovers James' American identity. Collister examines the narrative of The American Scene, the autobiographical writing, a number of short stories and two fascinating incomplete novels: works which offer contrasting notations of the self. A revised version of the novelist emerges, accommodated within national, familial and personal histories.
