''English Hours'' is a book of
travel writing
Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel can ...
by
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
published in 1905. The book collected various essays James had written on England over a period of more than thirty years, beginning in the 1870s. The essays had originally appeared in such periodicals as ''
The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'', ''
The Century Magazine
''The Century Magazine'' was an illustrated monthly magazine first published in the United States in 1881 by The Century Company of New York City, which had been bought in that year by Roswell Smith and renamed by him after the Century Associatio ...
'', ''Scribner's Magazine'', ''The Galaxy'' and ''Lippincott's Magazine''. James wrote a new introduction for the book and extensively revised many of the essays to create a more coherent whole.
Summary and themes
England was James' adopted country, so it is not surprising that the essays in ''English Hours'' are primarily positive and sometimes downright cheerful. The essay on
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
which begins the book gives full play to the British capital's definitely non-beautiful impression on James when he arrived in 1869:
"It was not lovely - it was in fact rather horrible; but as I move again through dusky, tortuous miles, in the greasy four-wheeler to which my luggage had compelled me to commit myself, I recognize the first step in an initiation of which the subsequent stages were to abound in pleasant things."
Some of the most pleasant things were James' trips to the English countryside, memorably described in essays such as "North Devon," "In Warwickshire" and "Old Suffolk." James grew particularly affectionate towards his eventual hometown of
Rye, East Sussex
is a small town and civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex, England, two miles from the sea at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede. An important member of the mediaeval Cinque Ports confederatio ...
and its surrounding area, as he recounts in "Winchelsea, Rye and 'Denis Duval'."
But James never loses his love for the metropolis on the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
, as "he reflects with elation that the British capital is the particular spot in the world which communicates the greatest sense of life." He writes with unfailing enthusiasm of "the dreadful, delightful city" he would come to know so well.
Table of contents
Critical evaluation
The essays in ''English Hours'' were written over a span of some three decades, and differences in style are evident despite James' attempt to revise the book into more of a uniform entity. So the book cannot claim the intensity and unity of ''
The American Scene
''The American Scene'' is a book of travel writing by Henry James about his trip through the United States in 1904-1905. Ten of the fourteen chapters of the book were published in the ''North American Review'', '' Harper's'' and the ''Fortnightl ...
'', or even the more relaxed wholeness of ''
A Little Tour in France
''A Little Tour in France'' is a book of travel writing by American writer Henry James. Published under the title ''En Province'' in 1883–1884 as a serial in ''The Atlantic Monthly'', the book recounts a six-week tour James made of many provinci ...
''.
But this poses no real problem for the reader, because James' attitudes toward England did not shift much during his long residence in the country. His knowing affection for "this decent and dauntless people," as he would call the English during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, plays through all the essays regardless of their dates.
References
* James, Henry (1993) ''Collected Travel Writings: Great Britain and America'';
omprisingEnglish Hours, The American Scene, Other Travels; annotated by Richard Howard. (Library of America; 64.) New York: Literary Classics of the U.S.; Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by the Viking Press, c1993
External links
*
*
Original magazine publication of the essay ''London'' (1888)Original magazine publication of the essay ''Two Excursions'' as part of a longer article entitled ''Three Excursions'' (1877)Original magazine publication of the essay ''In Warwickshire'' (1877)Note on the text of ''English Hours''at the
Library of America
The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors rangi ...
web site
{{Henry James
1905 non-fiction books
Books about England
American travel books
Books by Henry James
British travel books
English non-fiction books