Early and Late Revisions in Henry James's "A Passionate Pilgrim"

Abstract

N O WRITER OF PROSE was a more meticulous reviser than Henry James, and none showed in revision more clearly than he the method and purposes of his art. Several studies of James's revisions of his greater novels have already added much to our understanding of Henry James,' but one interesting matter has virtually escaped notice: from the very beginning of his career James was a reviser. His first published collection of short stories, Passionate and Other Tales, contained distinct revisions from the versions printed earlier in various magazines.2 The story which gives its name to this first volume of James provides an especially interesting subject of study. A Passionate Pilgrim is the earliest James story which the author chose to include in the definitive New York Edition. From its first appearance in the Atlantic Monthly in I871, the story was considerably revised before it gave its name to Passionate and Other Tales in i875. Ten years later, in i885, Macmillan and Company of London issued a collection of James's stories under the title Stories Revived. James took advantage of the opportunity given him by this reprinting to revise and publish A Passionate Pilgrim once more. And when he chose to include it in the thirteenth volume of the New York Edition in I908, another and final revision was in order.