The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Awkward Age, by Henry James

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Title: The Awkward Age

Author: Henry James

Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7433]
Posting Date: July 30, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AWKWARD AGE ***

Produced by Eve Sobol

THE AWKWARD AGE

By Henry James

PREFACE

I recall with perfect ease the idea in which "The Awkward Age" had its
origin, but re-perusal gives me pause in respect to naming it. This
composition, as it stands, makes, to my vision--and will have made
perhaps still more to that of its readers--so considerable a mass
beside the germ sunk in it and still possibly distinguishable, that I
am half-moved to leave my small secret undivulged. I shall encounter, I
think, in the course of this copious commentary, no better example, and
none on behalf of which I shall venture to invite more interest, of the
quite incalculable tendency of a mere grain of subject-matter to expand
and develop and cover the ground when conditions happen to favour it. I
say all, surely, when I speak of the thing as planned, in perfect good
faith, for brevity, for levity, for simplicity, for jocosity, in fine,
and for an accommodating irony. I invoked, for my protection, the spirit
of the lightest comedy, but "The Awkward Age" was to belong, in the
event, to a group of productions, here re-introduced, which have in
common, to their author's eyes, the endearing sign that they asserted
in each case an unforeseen principle of growth. They were projected
as small things, yet had finally to be provided for as comparative
monsters. That is my own title for them, though I should perhaps resent
it if applied by another critic--above all in the case of the piece
before us, the careful measure of which I have just freshly taken. The
result of this consideration has been in the first place to render sharp
for me again the interest of the whole process thus illustrated, and in
the second quite to place me on unexpectedly good terms with the work
itself. As I scan my list I encounter none the "history" of which
embodies a greater number of curious truths--or of truths at least