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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
In one of James's best-known stories, “The Middle Years” (1893), the mortally ill author Dencombe, staying at Bournemouth for the sake of what remains of his health, gets an advance copy of his latest – and almost certainly his last – novel, which is called The Middle Years. Looking over what might have been thought to be his finished and dismissed work on his clifftop bench, Dencombe revises it:
Dencombe was a passionate corrector, a fingerer of style; the last thing he ever arrived at was a form final for himself. His ideal would have been to publish secretly, and then, on the published text, treat himself to the terrified revise, sacrificing always a first edition and beginning for posterity and even for the collectors, poor dears, with a second.
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9 Ibid., 345, 346.
10 Ibid., 341.
11 Ibid., 342.
12 Ibid., 346.
13 Ibid., 347.
14 Ibid., 348.
15 Ibid., 353.
16 Ibid., 359.
17 Ibid., 360.
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