When Richard Garnett made a selection of James's short fiction, he preferred the 1890s, choosing few tales from the earlier and later periods. The late stories, as is often said, are harsh and bitter, though one of the best, ‘The Jolly Corner’, resolves harshness in harmony. It was no accident that led T. S. Eliot in The Family Reunion to locate his Orestes’ vision of the Eumenides in a not ‘very jolly corner’ as he saw his predecessor converting furies to angels of justice.

Some late stories after 1904 are anti-American, but not destructive. They reel under the shock of that famous return journey, but continue the themes, forms, and feelings of James's work in the genre throughout his career. ‘Crapy Cornelia’ is routinely quoted for its attack on the decline of modern manners, vulgarity, and the money culture, but its returned native finds a sacred archive, presided over by Cornelia's presence, and there is certainly no unrelieved cynicism. There are stories which shine out. ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ takes the idea of the unacted life, compressing complex characters, enigmatic dialogue, and symbolism to unfold suddenly in James's introverted but startling denouement. Like ‘The Jolly Corner’, itself a recall of earlier ghost stories, this marvellously titled story harks back to other tales of the unfulfilled life, like ‘The Altar of the Dead’, where James, who perhaps chose perfection of the work over perfection of the life, imagined alternative responses to celibacy and solitude. The story is not directly autobiographical: James is isolating one aspect of self-interpretation, and the central figures, though ‘men of imagination’, are not artists. ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ risks the symbol of a wild animal, making it stand for an agonized discovery, in imaginative retrospect, of lost opportunity for passion. The quiet understated narrative justifies the bold choice. Here we feel Yeats's beast stirring.

The short stories run into each other, used by James as a fluid medium, like his novel scenarios, in which he imagines different endings to one story. ‘The Jolly Corner’ reimagines not only the exile's character and history, but the tragic love-story of John Marcher and May Bartram, reborn as Spencer Brydon and Alice Staverton, another couple who share deep secrets but who face the beast inside the self together.