Definition
Boston was an important city of Henry James’s youth, connected with his first publishing steps and the deaths of his parents. In The American Scene (1907), the author recounts the changes he witnessed in the city after over 20 years of absence, including the demolition of the house he once lived in and the undermining of private space in favor of more democratic, open public space. This chapter focuses on his earlier Boston fiction of the 1880s for its prescient descriptions of the modernizing impulses that had all too visibly started to affect the city, well before James’s turn-of-the-century visit. “A New England Winter” (1884) and The Bostonians(1886) explore the theme of urban publicity and its impact on Boston’s men and women as well as on outsiders who negotiate old and new notions of urban identity. The stories are predominantly concerned with exposure in public spaces, such as streets, hotels, and entertainment halls, mobility, via mass transportation, and media...
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Acknowledgments
Part of the research for this article was supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the “First Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty members and Researchers and the procurement of high-cost research equipment grant.” The project is entitled “Hotels and the Modern Subject: 1890–1940.”
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Despotopoulou, A. (2022). Henry James’s Boston. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62419-8_205
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