The Late Ghost Stories of Henry James

The Late Ghost Stories of Henry James, edited by Henry Weikel / 222-page paperback, 4.75 x 7.5 inches, published by Dancing Star Press / design by Lauren Graycar / ISBN 9798992199000

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Collections of Henry James’s ghost stories tend to survey examples from across the author’s life, placing lighter early efforts alongside the imposing mastery of The Turn of the Screw. They edit by subject matter rather than style.

This new collection instead brings together seven stories written near the end of the author’s career—some now out of print for nearly fifty years, others featuring nothing that could even be explicitly labeled supernatural. Together, they record a specific experiment: a parallel and discrete trajectory of James’s “late style”, when the author developed new effects to look back and articulate morbid fixations, to advocate certain forms of lively attention and wakefulness.

Written in the same period as The Turn of the Screw, these stories are analyses of people haunted by sensations so unrelentingly specific that they seem to exist just beyond the limits of language, concentrated and contorted to the point of illegibility among layers of rumor, neuroticism, and suspicion. They are not like other ghost stories you have read; they will create a subtler, rarer unease.