Henry James: Travel Writings Vol. 2 (LOA #65): The Continent

Henry James

Library of America, Sep 1, 1993 - Travel - 868 pages

Henry James’s travel writings are at once literary masterpieces, unsurpassed guidebooks and penetrating reflections on the international themes familiar from his fiction. This volume, the second of two, begins with the classic A Little Tour in France (1900), illustrated with Joseph Pennell’s exquisite drawings from the original edition. James begins his tour of the French countryside one rainy morning in mid-September of 1882, when he sets off for the city of Tours as a means of exploring the proposition that “though France might be Paris, Paris was by no means France.”

From Tours, Balzac’s birthplace, James travels to the great chateaux of the Loire Valley, visiting Chambord, Amboise, Chenonceaux, and Blois, where, as you cross the threshold, “you step straight into the sunshine and storm of the French Renaissance.” Dense with literary associations and historical echoes, James’s prose brings castles and cathedrals and old walled towns to life. In his glancingly precise visual evocations of terrain and cityscape, he realizes his ambition “to sketch without a palette or brushes.”

Henry James loved Italy, “a beautiful disheveled nymph” to England’s “good married matron.” The incisive and witty essays in Italian Hours (1909) describe memorably happy sojourns in Venice, Rome, and Florence, and excursions to Siena, Assisi, Perugia, Capri, Ravenna, and other Italian cities. “Nowhere do art and life seem so interfused” as in Venice, wrote James in celebration of the splendor of Venetian light and color, air, and history. He records his radiant impressions of Roman churches and aqueducts, museums and fountains, and rambles through the gardens of the Villa Borghese in spring, when Rome seems lighted “with an irresistible smile.” All these essays are filled with James’s intense pleasure in Italian places and people.

This volume concludes with sixteen essays on such varied places as Switzerland, Holland, Rheims, and the Pyrénées, including a memorable account of the American volunteer ambulance corps in Europe during World War One.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Contents

• Introductory: 17
• Saint Martin: 33
• Blois: 40
• Chambord: 44
• Chambord: 50
• Chaumont: 60
• Chaumont from the Bridge: 63
• Chenonceaux: 67
• AzayleRideau: 76
• Langeais: 80
• Loches: 84
• Bourges: 90
• The Cathedral: 93
• Jacques Coeur: 97
• the Cathedral West Front: 105
• Le Mans: 107
• the Cathedral: 111
• Angers: 113
• Nantes: 119
• La Rochelle: 126
• Poitiers: 134
• Angoulême: 141
• Bordeaux: 143
• Toulouse: 147
• the Capitol: 153
• SaintSernin: 154
• Carcassonne: 160
• Carcassonne: 166
• Narbonne: 173
• Montpellier: 181
• The Pont du Gard: 187
• AiguesMortes: 192
• AiguesMortes: 195
• Nîmes: 197
• Tarascon: 204
• Arles: 211
• دو The Theatre: 217
• the Museum: 219
• Les Baux: 224
• Avignon: 232
• The Palace of the Popes: 235
• VilleneuvelèsAvignon: 238
• Vaucluse: 242
• Orange: 249
• the Theatre: 253
• Macon: 255
• BourgenBresse: 260
• The Church at Brou: 263
• Beaune: 268
• Dijon: 273
• Venice: 285
• An Early Impression: 336
• Two Old Houses and Three Young Women: 347
• Casa Alvisi: 359
• From Chambéry to Milan: 365
• The Old SaintGothard: 376
• Italy Revisited: 388
• A Roman Holiday: 413
• Roman Rides: 431
• Roman Neighbourhoods: 447
• The AfterSeason in Rome: 464
• From a Roman NoteBook: 470
• A Few Other Roman Neighbourhoods: 486
• A Chain of Cities: 497
• Siena Early and Late: 513
• The Autumn in Florence: 533
• Florentine Notes: 542
• Swiss Notes: 625
• Homburg Reformed: 635
• Darmstadt: 644
• The Splügen: 653
• In Holland: 663
• In Belgium: 670
• Chartres: 677
• Rouen: 684
• Etretat: 691
• From Normandy to the Pyrenees: 697
• Occasional Paris: 721
• A Little Tour: 735
• Very Modern Rome: 752
• The American Volunteer MotorAmbulance: 764
• France: 772
• Chronology: 777
• Note on the Texts: 792
• Notes: 807
• Index: 829
• Tuscan Cities: 836
• The Saints Afternoon and Others: 843

About the author

Henry James (1843-1916), born in New York City, was the son of noted religious philosopher Henry James, Sr., and brother of eminent psychologist and philosopher William James. His many works include Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Princess Casamassima (1886), The Aspern Papers(1888), The Turn of the Screw (1898), and three large novels of the new century, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904). He died in London in February 1916.

Richard Howard, volume editor, is a critic, translator, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. He is Professor of Practice in the School of the Arts of Columbia University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Henry James: Travel Writings Vol. 2 (LOA #65): The Continent; Volume 4 of Library of America Collected Nonfiction of Henry James
• Author: Henry James
• Editor: Richard Howard
• Publisher: Library of America, 1993
• ISBN: 0940450771, 9780940450776
• Length: 868 pages
• Subjects: Travel / Essays & Travelogues; Travel / Europe / France; Travel / Europe / Italy