Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Within the Rim and Other Essays
    Within the Rim and Other Essays
    Within the Rim and Other Essays
    Ebook87 pages1 hour

    Within the Rim and Other Essays

    By Henry James

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Within the Rim and Other Essays
    Author

    Henry James

    Henry James (1843-1916) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and non-fiction. He spent most of his life in Europe, and much of his work regards the interactions and complexities between American and European characters. Among his works in this vein are The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), and The Ambassadors (1903). Through his influence, James ushered in the era of American realism in literature. In his lifetime he wrote 12 plays, 112 short stories, 20 novels, and many travel and critical works. He was nominated three times for the Noble Prize in Literature.

    Read more from Henry James

    Related to Within the Rim and Other Essays

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      John Ashbery

      Mar 15, 2019

      He could understand the things at home.—Wallace Stevens, “Things of August” Scribbled on the expansive mist, the desireof many dwindles to usand our “activities,” wholesomeor otherwise. Soon it becomes apparentthat neither they nor I have any prise o

      4 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of Lost Time

      Oct 29, 2018

      One might have said that the portents which that day were to rescue me from my discouragement and give me back faith in literature were determined to multiply themselves, for a servant, a long time in the service of the Prince de Guermantes, recognis

      5 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2021

      The light from the full moon lent a silky, glacial sheen to the towering front of the cloud, which stretched off to the horizon in both directions. I stood transfixed as it made its way down the street toward me at a little over the town’s speed limi

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Quietest Guest Of All

      Mar 30, 2023

      Crown your career with the clavichord. You cannot, I admit, play concertos with big ensembles, since it does not roar and thunder like the pianoforte; neither can you, surrounded by a large audience, sound above their shouts of bravo and make their c

      4 min read

    • Article

      Bard In The Woods

      Nov 30, 2020

      Bard In The Woods
      4 min read

    • Article

      The thirteenth Day

      Apr 14, 2022

      The thirteenth Day
      31 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Nov 6, 2020

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Nov 6, 2020

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Southern Stand

      Mar 16, 2020

      Southern Stand
      5 min read

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      Live On TV: History At Work

      Oct 27, 2022

      Live On TV: History At Work
      5 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 3, 2019

      And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons. —Ogden Nash, “Everybody Tells Me Everything,” The Face Is Familiar, 1941 Someone goes by wearing a

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      At first these poems were their own sweetfurlough or as Basquiat did it the reflexiveopening of a new personal phase for mealone that many have traveled beforebut never together a phrase too busy to sitand be spoken that awakens to the recurringwave

      2 min read

    • Article

      Hard Times

      Nov 12, 2019

      Hard Times
      2 min read

    • Article

      Cone Rangers

      Oct 26, 2023

      Cone Rangers
      4 min read

    • Article

      Alice Knott

      Jul 3, 2020

      Alice Knott
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Age of Stories

      May 27, 2022

      The Age of Stories
      4 min read

    • Article

      No Man Is An Island

      Sep 15, 2017

      No Man Is An Island
      9 min read

    • Article

      ‘Happiness Can Be Ignited By Making Something Small Infinite’: What Makes Me Happy Now

      Jan 28, 2023

      It’s a nightmare, a barbaric farce. The city is first taken by Russians, then by Ukrainians, then by Russians again; foreign forces join the struggle, gangster hordes go on killing sprees, thousands are butchered, and a plague engulfs the survivors.

      5 min read

    • Article

      If I Had a Sense of Beauty

      Dec 5, 2017

      If I Had a Sense of Beauty
      14 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems by Geoffrey Hill

      Dec 15, 2018

      62. Why such irony in re the mystical context when a graph of even the most commonplace exchange would appear perplexed; when we drop out from the plainest statement in the posture of a bat? So, decide to make something of that, the style to resemble

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Planetary Price To Pay

      May 9, 2021

      A Planetary Price To Pay
      4 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      In Orbit

      Dec 1, 2019

      In Orbit
      13 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      Hesiod described our world’s uniform planeas Achilles’ shield afloaton the river Oceanus. A beliefthat stood until Pythagorasobserved the shape of the moon’s terminatorin orbital cycle. And though more than a millenniumof scientific progress has brou

      3 min read

    • Article

      Fear And Loathing In Mesopotamia

      Aug 23, 2023

      In these sensitive times, when hurt feelings can start a witch hunt and end careers, it's no surprise that historians have come over all emotional. There are centres for the study of the history of emotions in London, Berlin and across Australia and

      3 min read

    Reviews for Within the Rim and Other Essays

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Within the Rim and Other Essays - Henry James

      Project Gutenberg's Within the Rim and Other Essays, by Henry James

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Within the Rim and Other Essays

      Author: Henry James

      Release Date: September 14, 2011 [EBook #37425]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITHIN THE RIM AND OTHER ESSAYS ***

      Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was

      produced from scanned images of public domain material

      from the Internet Archive.)

      WITHIN THE RIM

      WITHIN THE RIM

      AND OTHER ESSAYS

      1914-15

      HENRY JAMES

      LONDON: 48 PALL MALL

      W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.

      GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND

      Copyright 1918

      Within the Rim—Written in Feb. 1915 for Miss E. Asquith for a proposed album in aid of the Arts Fund. The idea of the album was abandoned, and the article was ultimately published in the Fortnightly Review, Aug. 1917.

      Refugees in Chelsea—Published in the Times Literary Supplement, March 23, 1916.

      The American Volunteer Motor-Ambulance Corps in France: A Letter to the Editor of an American Journal—Issued as a pamphlet, 1914.

      France—Published in The Book of France, edited by Winifred Stephens, Macmillan, 1915.

      The Long Wards—Published in The Book of the Homeless, edited by Edith Wharton, Macmillan, 1916.

      Thanks are due in each case for the permission to reprint these essays.

      WITHIN THE RIM

      THE first sense of it all to me after the first shock and horror was that of a sudden leap back into life of the violence with which the American Civil War broke upon us, at the North, fifty-four years ago, when I had a consciousness of youth which perhaps equalled in vivacity my present consciousness of age. The illusion was complete, in its immediate rush; everything quite exactly matched in the two cases; the tension of the hours after the flag of the Union had been fired upon in South Carolina living again, with a tragic strangeness of recurrence, in the interval during which the fate of Belgium hung in the scales and the possibilities of that of France looked this country harder in the face, one recognised, than any possibility, even that of the England of the Armada, even that of the long Napoleonic menace, could be imagined to have looked her. The analogy quickened and deepened with every elapsing hour; the drop of the balance under the invasion of Belgium reproduced with intensity the agitation of the New England air by Mr Lincoln's call to arms, and I went about for a short space as with the queer secret locked in my breast of at least already knowing how such occasions helped and what a big war was going to mean. That this was literally a light in the darkness, or that it materially helped the prospect to be considered, is perhaps more than I can say; but it at least added the strangest of savours, an inexpressible romantic thrill, to the harsh taste of the crisis: I found myself literally knowing 'by experience' what immensities, what monstrosities, what revelations of what immeasurabilities, our affair would carry in its bosom—a knowledge that flattered me by its hint of immunity from illusion. The sudden new tang in the atmosphere, the flagrant difference, as one noted, in the look of everything, especially in that of people's faces, the expressions, the hushes, the clustered groups, the detached wanderers and slow-paced public meditators, were so many impressions long before received and in which the stretch of more than half a century had still left a sharpness. So I took the case in and drew a vague comfort, I can scarce say why, from recognition; so, while recognition lasted, I found it come home to me that we, we of the ancient day, had known, had tremendously learnt, what the awful business is when it is 'long,' when it remains for months and months bitter and arid, void even of any great honour. In consequence of which, under the rapid rise of presumptions of difficulty, to whatever effect of dismay or of excitement, my possession of something like a standard of difficulty, and, as I might perhaps feel too, of success, became in its way a private luxury.

      My point is, however, that upon this luxury I was allowed after all but ever so scantily to feed. I am unable to say when exactly it was that the rich analogy, the fine and sharp identity between the faded and the vivid case broke down, with the support obscurely derived from them; the moment anyhow came soon enough at which experience felt the ground give way and that one swung off into space, into history, into darkness, with every lamp extinguished and every abyss gaping. It ceased quite to matter for reassurance that the victory of the North had been so delayed and yet so complete, that our struggle had worn upon the world of the time, and quite to exasperation, as could well be remembered, by its length; if the present complication should but begin to be as long as it was broad no term of comparison borrowed from the past would so much as begin to fit it. I might have found it humiliating; in fact, however, I found it of the most commanding interest, whether at certain hours of dire apprehension or at certain others of the finer probability, that the biggest like convulsion our generations had known was still but too clearly to be left far behind for exaltations and terrors, for effort and result, as a general exhibition of the perversity of nations and of the energy of man. Such at least was the turn the comparison

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1