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Zacharias' Glowing Review from Time Literary Supplement
Greg Zacharias, Professor of English at Creighton University

The Complete Letters of Henry James Volumes 1 through 3 received a glowing review by Michael Gorra in The Times Literary Supplement No. 5677.

Gorra says, "The letters collected in these three elegant volumes, edited by Pierre A. Walker and Greg W. Zacharias, cover the period in which Henry James becomes Henry James. When they begin, he was the author of some slashing reviews and a few good stories, but no more. When they end, his second major novel, The American, was moving through serialization in the Atlantic Monthly and he had reaped the fruits of that essay on Turgenev.

"These letters have a particular job to do. They certainly contain moments of casual brilliance… With such passages in mind, two things need to be said about the extraordinary job of editing that Walker and Zacharias have done. First, they print James's letters in plain text, reproducing his many misspellings and abbreviations and strike outs: James wrote quickly and in an almost illegible hand; he blotted many words and yet hardly ever had to struggle for the right ones; his most aphoristic moments appear to have been spontaneous. Second, these letters contain an awful lot of proper names, many of them belonging to those who, like Edmund Tweedy, were obscure at the time and are more so now. Earlier editions of letters by Edel or Phillip Horne, among others, have identified most of these figures. this edition gets them all, and both the footnotes and the biographical register at the back of each volume are at once succinct and full. They allow any reader to place and know the people in this busy social world.

He continues, "This tranche of The Complete Letters of Henry James follows that covering the period 1855-72, which appeared in 2006. It will be many years before the series finished its run. There are over 10,000 letters extant, most of them never before in print, and, given the level of annotation that Walker and Zacharias provide, it will take far more than forty volumes to publish those from the forty remaining years of his life… As a piece of design, it is superior. It is admittedly expensive - but at least you can see where the money has been spent."

The Complete Letters of Henry James fills a crucial gap in modern literary studies by presenting in a scholarly edition the complete letters of one of the greatest novelists and letter writers of the English language. Comprising more than ten thousand letters reflecting on a remarkably wide range of topics - from JAmes's own life and literary projects to broader questions about art, literature and criticism - this edition is an indispensable resource for students of JAmes and of American and English literature, culture and criticism as well as for research libraries throughout North America and Europe and for scholars of James, the European novel and modern literature.

More information on The Complete Letters of Henry James can be found at mockingbird.creighton.edu. or on the Center for Henry James Studies Facebook page.

The Complete Letters of Henry James can be purchased through the Nebraska Press.