Read the winning piece of our 2025 Nonfiction Contest “Through the Mirror” by Jessie Cato selected by Lucy Ives.

Read
September 26, 1943

The Lemmings

By Donald H. Stauffer

(A philosophical poem) Let readers say (description or abuse),"Pure were his morals, though his verse was loose.”The technical end I blame on Robert Frost,On Butler, Skelton, and others whose names […]

September 26, 1943

E. M. Forster

By J. C. R.

The Forster revival is good for us, especially in a time when everybody is planning a new world. The only one of the five novels that was sufficiently known to […]

September 26, 1943

The James Number

By Editors

The nine essays which make up the body of this number are in tribute to Henry James upon the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth. They were prepared […]

September 26, 1943

Henry and William: Two Notes

By Eliseo Vivas

A radical temperamental difference seems to separate Henry James from his brother, orienting them towards opposite quarters. This difference expresses itself in many ways, but most obviously through the countries […]

September 26, 1943

The Demuth Pictures

By John L. Sweeney

In his preface to The Golden Bowl Henry James explains, at some length, why he chose purely photographic decorations, rather than illustrations, for the New York Edition of his Novels […]

September 22, 1943

The Days Before

By Katherine Anne Porter

Of late, when America has somewhat reluctantly decided to claim Henry James as its own, in spite of his having renounced so serious an obligation as his citizenship, there has […]

September 22, 1943

James the Melodramatist

By Jacques Barzun

In a foolish essay entitled “Books and You,” Mr. Somerset Maugham, while scorning James’s work as trivial and superficial, is nevertheless forced to admit that it somehow “keeps the reader […]