Henry James's Dalliance with the Newspaper World

Abstract

Henry James's Dalliance with the Newspaper World Charles Johanningsmeier In the summer of 1884, boldfaced, large-type advertisements announced the imminent publication in newspapers across the country of two Henry James short stories. "PANDORA! PANDORA!" exclaimed the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and the San Francisco Chronicle trumpeted the news that "To-morrow's SUNDAY CHRONICLE will contain the first chapters of . . . GEORGINA'S REASONS. By HENRY JAMES." These advertisements, and the stories that appeared shortly thereafter in ten widely dispersed newspapers, are discoveries that should greatly interest James scholars. Given that in A Bibliography of Henry James, Leon Edel and Dan Laurence list these stories' sole serial publication as occurring in the New York Sun newspaper (333), the nine newly-found appearances should prompt revision of this generally authoritative bibliography. More important, though, these publications suggest the need to reassess the meaning of a little-known and little-understood episode in James's career. Over the years scholars have made a number of assertions about what the publication of these two stories in the New York Sun signifies; almost all, however, have been based on incomplete and uncertain evidence. Three questions are central. First, where and how were these stories published? Second, what were James's motives for writing these works and publishing them in newspapers, which he frequently regarded as representatives of vulgar mass culture? (Ironically, this view of newspapers is especially prominent in The Bostonians, which James stopped working on in order to write "Pandora" and "Georgina's Reasons.") Third, what did readers at the time make of these stories in their serial forms? Because no written accounts exist of how actual individual readers reacted to these stories, answering the third question is an especially difficult task. However, a close examination of the contexts in which the stories appeared provides a number of clues as to how readers might have reacted to these stories and what cultural [End Page 36] work they performed. Elements comprising these contexts include readers' expectations of the Sunday newspaper; the stories' typography, lack of illustrations, and subheadlines; plus the advertisements, news reports, and feature stories that surrounded James's works. "Pandora" and "Georgina's Reasons" first appeared in newspapers in small type on cheap newsprint, shoehorned in amid assorted types of other dated materials that created the visual smorgasbord of the American daily newspaper. To many bibliographers and other textual scholars such materials are worth little notice compared to the texts of stories by one of American literature's finest authors. Yet all of the elements surrounding the fiction undoubtedly influenced how contemporary newspaper readers viewed them. In the case of "Pandora" and "Georgina's Reasons," these contextual elements almost certainly created a wide disparity between what James—an upper-class, critically respected author—intended to say with these stories, what modern readers make of them, and how contemporary newspaper readers interpreted them. I Edel and Laurence state that "Pandora" and "Georgina's Reasons" were first published serially in the New York Sun newspaper in June, July, and August 1884. Slightly more complete information is provided in the brief notations next to the stories' titles as included in the collection The Author of Beltraffio (1885): "First appeared in the New York Sun (and syndicated)" (70). Unfortunately, though, there is no explanation of what "syndicated" means in this case. Most other scholars, deferring to Edel and Laurence's extensive knowledge in this area and accepting what James himself said about where these stories were published, have also written that they appeared only in the Sun and have based their critical analyses on this assumption; 1 only Michael Anesko seems aware that there were "other papers [involved] in the syndication scheme" (187). However, his incorrect assertion about the headline for "Georgina's Reasons" as it appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer indicates that he never inspected this appearance, instead relying on Edward P. Mitchell's false statement in 1924 that "Georgina's Reasons" "appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer with title extended in the fashion of the bold headliner so as to read: 'Georgina's Reasons: Henry James's Latest Story; a Woman Who Commits Bigamy and Enforces Silence on Her Husband!'—all this, no doubt...