BOOKS FROM 1900
Henry James
The Soft Side
(1900)
Henry James composed the twelve stories that were published under the title The Soft Side between 1898 and 1900. They were written, according to James' biographyer Leon Edel, to finance Lamb House, his new home in Rye, England.
Suffering from a strained writing hand, James probably dictated most of the stories, described by one critic as "amusettes," to his secretary William MacAlpine. James often rallied against compressing his skills into "a fixed and beggarly number of words" to suit the short story market. He called this "the cramp of the too intensely short."
In England, Methuen published The Soft Side with a printing of 3000 in 1900, the year James characterized as "so monstrously numbered." MacMillan Co. published it here with a single printing of 2800.
Still to come were The Wings of the Dove in 1902, The Ambassadors in 1903 and The Golden Bowl in 1904.
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