Henry James and the Writing of Transport

Alicia Rix

Format
Hardback
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Country
United Kingdom
Published
30 April 2025
Pages
250
ISBN
9781108473170

Henry James and the Writing of Transport

Alicia Rix

Few studies of Henry James and travel attend to the act of travelling itself: a formative experience for the author and for his invariably itinerant characters. This book explores the relationship between transport and representation in James's later fiction, examining the ineluctable significance of moving and being moved. Each chapter adopts a particular vehicle: by ship, cab, train, motorcar and bicycle, showing how James makes use of the cyclist's embroilment in media culture, the ocean-traveller's fascination with record, or the cabby's superior knowledge of geographical and sexual relations. Drawing on contemporary newspapers, fiction, and guidebooks, Henry James and the Writing of Transport demonstrates how transport is not only contextually crucial to James's fictions but inheres in his style and logic. In particular, it argues, transport ministers to James's complex preoccupation with relationality: a quality which ranges from the intense subjectivity of his fictional worlds to their series of transatlantic encounters.

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