Download or read book Henry James's Style of Retrospect written by Oliver Herford and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry James's Style of Retrospect examines the last twenty-five years in the writing life of Henry James (1843-1916), one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century. It addresses a significantly under-appreciated dimension of James's late-life output: not his fiction, but rather the substantial body of retrospective and commemorative non-fiction (the 'late personal writings' of the title) which he began to produce in the 1890s, and whichcame to assume a leading role in the last phase of his career. It addresses these works from a literary-critical viewpoint, analysing the way James's style changed in response to the conditions imposed onhim--but also the opportunities revealed to him--by the project of writing about the real past; the book's main contribution is to develop a cumulative analysis of his style in the period 1890DS 1915. It also has a biographical aspect, however, and tells a story of his professional and emotional life in these years that particularly emphasises his investment in historical and personal continuity, his sense of the duties of commemoration, and his interest in the experiences of ageing andremembering.