A half century ago there appeared, appropriately enough in
PMLA, the first academic study of the celebrated—or
deplored—revisions made by Henry James for the New York Edition
of
his collected works. The study frankly criticized the eccentricities of "the
later manner of Mr. Henry James," as found in The Awkward
Age, and questioned "whether a mode of writing which so
constantly
distracts attention from the substance to the form of expression is still to be
called a style."[1] As
newer critics we may perhaps be amused at the assumed dichotomy between
form and content in this criticism, and at the rigid subordination of the
former to the latter; yet the objections to James's revisions are still very
much with us, even if the arguments pro and con have become more
sophisticated.[2] The controversy
between revisionists and anti-revisionists has grown in complexity and
intensity since the New York
Edition began to appear in 1907, with the disagreements often being based
on differing assumptions about James's development. Anti-revisionists
frequently maintain that he reached the apex of his art with The
Portrait of a Lady or perhaps The Bostonians, while
revisionists find his greatest achievements in the last three major novels.
What complicates this controversy over the revisions is the number of
stopping places between the original editions and the final revisions of his
works. Forty years ago PMLA could print an article on
James's revisions that assumed there were only two relevant editions of
Roderick Hudson instead of the seven editions and three sets
of
revisions that are now known.
[3] Yet
the discovery of a number of intermediate texts and revisions has not really
dissipated the disagreements between revisionists and anti-revisionists
because they mainly concern the revisions made for the New York Edition.
What has not been clearly enough recognized in the controversy, however,
is that the significance of these late revisions depends rather heavily on the
nature of the unrevised or preceding text.
If it is clear, as a
contemporary of the New York Edition maintained in 1908, that "Mr.
James wrote better English thirty years ago than he writes to-day,"
[4] is it also clear that his English of
1888 is
better? And what about the prose of 1898?
