The Complete Letters of Henry James 1880-1883

Recipient of the Approved Edition seal from the Modern Language Association’s committee on scholarly editions

This volume of The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1880–1883 includes 178 letters, 98 of which are published for the first time, written from November 1, 1881, to January 1, 1883. The letters record Henry James’s establishment as one of the preeminent professional writers in Britain and the United States and follow James’s return journeys to the United States following the deaths of his parents. This volume concludes with James’s assumption of his role as the executor of his father’s will and thus the de facto head of the family.

Henry James (1843–1916) was an American author and literary critic. He wrote some two dozen novels, including Portrait of a Lady and The Golden Bowl and left behind more than ten thousand letters. Michael Anesko is a professor of English and American studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is a general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James and the author, most recently, of Generous Mistakes: Incidents of Error in Henry James. Greg W. Zacharias is a professor of English and the founder and director of the Center for Henry James Studies at Creighton University. He is the editor of A Companion to Henry James and the coeditor of Tracing Henry James. Katie Sommer has been an associate editor of the Complete Letters of Henry James series since 2007 and has worked on the Henry James letters project since 2001.