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The Sense of the Past (London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917)

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The Sense of the Past
(London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917)

by Henry James

First English edition. First (posthumous) publication of James' unfinished novel The Sense of the Past, along with his notes for it.

4384557The Sense of the Past
(London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917)
1917Henry James (1843-1916)


THE

SENSE OF THE PAST


HENRY JAMES



THE SENSE OF THE PAST



Annan Ph. sc.

Henry James

from a photograph by Alvin Landon Coburn kindly lent by Mr. J. B. Pinker



THE SENSE OF
THE PAST


BY

HENRY JAMES





LONDON: 48 PALL MALL

W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.

GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND



COPYRIGHT

1917



PREFACE

The Sense of the Past, the second of the two novels which Henry James left unfinished, had been planned and begun some years before he died. The two first books and a part of the third had been written, and it appears that the idea had been abandoned for accidental reasons, not because he was himself dissatisfied with it. He went back to it again during the first winter of the war, having found that in the conditions he could not then go on with The Ivory Tower and hoping that he might be able to work upon a story of remote and phantasmal life. He re-dictated, with slight modifications, the chapters already written, and continued the book at intervals until the autumn of 1915. He was then engaged for a time on other work the introduction to the Letters from America of Rupert Brooke. He had just finished this and was preparing to return immediately to The Sense of the Past when on December 2 he was attacked by his last illness. The later chapters of the novel, as they stand, had not been finally revised by him; but it was never his habit to make more than verbal changes at that stage.

The notes on the course which the book was to follow were dictated when he reached the point where the original draft broke off. These notes are given in full; their part in Henry James's method of work is indicated in the preface to The Ivory Tower.




This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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