Henry James’s Permanent Adolescence

JOHN R. BRADLEY was educated at University College London, Dartmouth College and Exeter College, Oxford. He was editor of the London Quarterly (1994-97) and has contributed essays and reviews to many newspapers and journals in Britain and the United States. He has edited two collections of essays: Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire (1999) and Henry James on the Stage and Screen (2000).

'Henry James's Permanent Adolescence is an important addition to the critical reconsideration of Henry James's fictional representations of gender and sexuality. John R. Bradley's notion of 'permanent adolescence' helps us understand James's relationship to his art in the wider context of late-Victorian aestheticism and Decadence, with a particular focus on Walter Pater, John Addington Symonds and Oscar Wilde. Carefully interpreting representative works from each major period is James's career, Bradley offers us a new perspective on how James's art developed in conjunction with his changing views on sexuality'. - Professor John Carlos Rowe, University of California, Irvine 'Bradley writes with admirable lucidity and a companionable briskness...his book...(is) a judicious and, at times, illuminating study of James as a 'gay' artist.' - James Friel, Liverpool John Moores University 'Henry James's Permanent Adolescence is a valuable and well-written contribution to the on-going debate on James's fiction.' - English Language Teaching

• Textual Note List of Abbreviations Critical Hostility Defining James's Homosexuality Whitman, Pater and the Importance of Being Manly in the Early Fiction John Addington Symonds and 'The Author of Beltraffio ' Public Scandals, Private Dilemmas The Uses of Obscurity Bibliography Index