Boring Postcards. Spaces and Places in the Photographic Frontispieces to Henry James’s New York Edition
Abstract
The essay offers a new reading of the photographic frontispieces produced by Alvin Langdon Coburn for the New York Editon of Henry James’s novels and tales published between 1907 and 1909. This reading is grounded in three main moves. First, taking as a starting point the overall project of the New York Edition and the multiple textual layers with which the images interact in the material support (not only the literary texts, but also the prefaces that James specifically wrote for the edition, and even the captions that accompany each of the images). Second, considering the frontispieces as a series of images related to one another and to several texts at the same time, in an intersectional pattern that goes beyond the mere one-to-one association. Third, situating the frontispieces in the context of James’s spatial imagination, the uses of photography in late nineteenth-century visual culture, and literary tourism. Thanks to these critical moves, it is possible to reflect upon the images’ force and the multifaceted intermedial relations they trigger, within what one may call a performative framework.
Downloads
References
Atget, Eugène, Intérieurs parisiens [1910], Ed. Molly Nesbit and Françoise Reynaud, éditions Carré, Paris, 1992.
Baetens, Jan, Illustrer Proust. Histoire d’un défi, Bruxelles, Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2022.
Baetens, Jan, Van Gelder, Hilde, “Petite poétique de la photographie mise en roman (1970-1990)”, La Revue des lettres modernes. Photographie et romanesque, Ed. Danièle Meaux, Paris, Garnier, 2006: 257-71.
Barthes, Roland, “Rhétorique de l’image” (1964), Engl. trans. Stephen Heat, “Rhetoric of the Image”, Id., Image – Music – Text, New York, Hill and Wang, 1977: 32-51.
Id., La Chambre claire (1980), Engl. trans. Richard Howard, Camera Lucida. Reflection on Photography, New York, Hill and Wang, 1981.
Bogardus, Ralph F., Pictures and Texts. Henry James, A.L. Coburn, and New Ways of Seeing in Literary Culture, Ann Arbor, Michigan, UMI Research Press, 1984.
Bullen, J.B., Thomas Hardy. The World of His Novels, London, Frances Lincoln, 2013.
Brownell, William C., unpublished letter to Henry James, August 28, 1906, Scribner’s Archives, Princeton University.
Cameron, Sharon, Thinking in Henry James, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Ceserani, Remo, L’occhio della medusa. Fotografia e letteratura, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2011.
Clayton, Owen, “Flirting with Photography: Henry James and Photographic Exchange”, History of Photography, 41.4 (2017): 329-42.
Cosgrove, Denis (ed.), Mappings, London, Reaktion Books, 1999.
De Romanis, Roberto, “Le finestre di Henry James: A.L. Coburn e la New York Edition”, Transiti letterari e culturali, Eds. Giuseppe Sertoli and Goffredo Miglietta, Trieste, E.U.T., 1999: 383-402.
Doubois, Philippe, L’acte photographique et autres essais, Paris, Nathan, 1990.
Genette, Gérard, Seuils (1987), Engl. trans. Jane E. Lewin, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Hale, Jr., Edward E., “The Rejuvenation of Henry James”, The Dial, 44 (1908): 174-176.
Hamon, Philippe, Expositions: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth Century France [1989], Berkley, University of California Press, 1993.
Id., Du Descriptif, Paris, Hachette, 1993.
Harmon, Charles, “Alvin Langdon Coburn’s Frontispieces to Henry James’s New York Edition. Pictures of an Institutional Imaginary”, The Victorian Illustrated Book, Ed. Richard Maxwell, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2002: 297-331.
Haslam, Sara, “Wessex, Literary Pilgrims, and Thomas Hardy”, Literary Tourism and Nineteenth Century Culture, ed. Nicola J. Watson, Basingstoke – New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Higgins, Charles, “Photographic Aperture: Coburn’s Frontispieces to James’s New York Edition”, American Literature, 53.4 (1982): 661-75.
James, Henry, “The Prefaces to the New York Edition” [1907-1909], Literary Criticism, vol. II, French Writers, Other European Writers, The Prefaces to the New York Edition, Ed. Leon Edel, New York, The Library of America, 1984.
Id., Letters, 1895-1916, vol. IV, Ed. Leon Edel, Cambridge, Mass., London, England, Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Id., “Four Meetings” [1877], in Id., Daisy Miller and Other Stories, Ed. Jean Gooder, Oxford – New York, Oxford University Press, 1985: 225-67.
Jameson, Fredric, The Political Unconscious, Cornell, Cornell University Press, 1981.
Maleuvre, Didier, Museums Memories. History, Technology, Art, Stanford, Stranford University Press, 1999.
Mc Whirter, David, “Introduction”, in Henry James’s New York Edition. The Construction of Authorship, Ed. David Mc Whirter, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1995: 1-19.
Id., “Photo-negativity: The Visual Rhetoric of James’s and Coburn’s New York Edition Frontispieces”, English Language Notes, 44.2 (2006): 101-116.
Meneghelli, Donata, Una forma che include tutto. Henry James e la teoria del romanzo, Bologna, il Mulino, 1997.
Mills, Victoria, “Photography, Travel Writing and Tactile Tourism: Extra-Illustrating The Marble Faun”, Travel Writing, Visual Culture, and Form, 1760-1900, Eds. Mary Henes and Brian H. Murray, Basingstoke – New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016: 65-86.
Nadel, Ira, “Visual Culture: The Photo Frontispieces to the New York Edition”, Henry James’s New York Edition. The Construction of Authorship, Ed. David Mc Whirter, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1995: 90-108.
Pickles, John, A History of Spaces. Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the Geo-Coded World, London, Rourledge, 2004.
Pothier, Jacques, “The Designs of Faulkner’s ‘Yoknapatawpha Saga’ and Balzac’s Human Comedy”, Faulkner Journal, 13.1-2 (1997-1998): 109-30.
Shloss, Carol, In Visible Light. Photography and the American Writer: 1840-1940, New York – Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987.
Simmel, Georg, “Brüke und Tür” (1909), Engl. trans. “Bridge and Door”, Theory, Culture, & Society, 11.1 (1994): 1-5.
Tally, Robert Jr., Drakakis, John, Spatiality, London, Routledge, 2012.
Tally, Robert Jr. (ed.), Literary Cartographies. Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative, Basingstoke – New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Tick, Stanley, “Positive and Negatives: Henry James v/s Photography”, Nineteenth Century Studies, 7 (1993): 69-101.
Tucker, Emy, The Illustration of the Master. Henry James and the Magazine Revolution, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2010.
Urry, John, Larsen, Jonas, The Tourist Gaze 3.0, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Sage, 2011.
Copyright (c) 2023 Donata Meneghelli
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
