Embarrassments »

Henry James was a master at tracing the social boundaries of the Gilded Age -- between Old and New World, Europe and America, desire and convention, men and women. He brought an invaluably clear-eyed, and critical, sensibility to America's evolving cultural mores.

The almost autoerotic parable, The Figure in the Carpet (1896) concerns the "secret" surrounding the published works of Hugh Vereker, which his friends, the narrator and another critic, seek in vain to unravel. The rival critic at last discovers the secret, but dies before he can reveal it. Glasses (1896) is the gruesome tale of how personal physical appearances effected prospects in the marriage market. The Next Time (1895) was another of James' contributions to The Yellow Book in which an author, determined to write a best seller, continually produces "an unscrupulous, an unsparing, a shameless, merciless masterpiece." They all, of course, prove to be commercially unsuccessful. The Way It Came (1896) was re-entitled The Friends of the Friends in its New York edition. It is a return to one of James' old themes-the anti-marriage plot.