Generous Mistakes

Michael Anesko explores Henry James's efforts to correct 'mistakes' that he later perceived in his books as first printed. He focuses on two of Henry James's most important texts, The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and The Ambassadors (1903), and the ways in which both betray (in very peculiar ways) the fallibility of James himself.

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By combining the techniques of textual criticism and the insights of close reading, Generous Mistakes offers new perspectives not only on two of Henry James's major novels (The Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors) but also on the process by which they became the books we know--or think we know. Through a better understanding of the conditions of production that affected James's author function, we achieve a deeper appreciation of the historical contingencies of his artistry. Closely examining new forms of evidence (even fingerprints), Generous Mistakes contends that authorship is a hybrid construction, a sometimes unpredictable sequence of different forms of practice, each of which contributes meaningfully to the texts we read and analyze. Offering a sustained examination of the 'textual condition' of James's work--going beyond the relatively familiar ground of authorial revision--this study brings into sharper focus the complex and sometimes arbitrary factors that contributed to the making of two masterpieces of modern fiction and to the legend of the master who wrote them.