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The Prince of Agents: James Brand Pinker and Henry James

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The Prince of Agents: James Brand Pinker and Henry James THE PRINCE OF AGENTS: JAMES BRAND PINKER AND HENRY JAMES A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Kerry Lee Sutherland December 2012 Dissertation written by Kerry Lee Sutherland B.A., University of Akron, 1992 M.A., University of Akron, 2002 M.L.I.S., Kent State University, 2003 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2012 Approved by ____________________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Robert W. Trogdon, Professor of English ____________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Wesley Raabe, Assistant Professor of English ____________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Raymond A. Craig, Professor of English ____________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Clarence E. Wunderlin, Jr., Professor of History Accepted by _____________________________, Chair, Department of English Robert W. Trogdon _____________________________, Graduate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Raymond A. Craig ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………. iv INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………… 1 CHAPTER ONE – Heinemann and Methuen ………………….. 29 CHAPTER TWO – Constable, Houghton Mifflin, Macmillan and Scribner ………………………………………………………54 CHAPTER THREE – Harper & Brothers and Chapman & Hall ...104 CHAPTER FOUR – Periodicals ………………………………….118 CHAPTER FIVE – The Estate ……………………………………149 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………...187 PUBLICATIONS BY HENRY JAMES, LATE 1898-1923………193 BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………...199 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the following for assisting me in obtaining the necessary copies of primary documents in order to complete this study: Emilie Hardman and Susan Halpert of Houghton Library, AnnaLee Pauls and Charles Green of Princeton University Library, Karen Nangle and Susan Brady of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Jason Nargis of the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, and Anne Garner of The New York Public Library. Many thanks as well to the members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Wesley Raabe, Dr. Raymond Craig, and Dr. Clarence Wunderlin for their thoughtful consideration of my work and the helpful advice that made great improvement possible. Committee chair Dr. Robert Trogdon was the ideal director for this dissertation; thank you for your honest and direct assessment of my work over the past four years, along with your expertise in the subject matter, sense of humor, and unfailing belief in the value of the project and my ability to do it justice. I would also like to thank my parents, Robert and Leona Senn, for their support, and my children, John and Barbara Kate, for sharing me with The Master. Barbara has been my research assistant for the majority of her thirteen years, finding humor during the inevitable frustrations, particularly when dealing with Henry James’s handwriting. The “Harry Hampshire Shark Attack” swimming game that came of our shared efforts to decipher the great writer’s scrawl has been great fun at the pool every summer. iv Introduction This study is a narrative of the work accomplished on behalf of Henry James by his literary agent, James Brand Pinker, drawing from primary documents to establish that without Pinker, James would have spent the last fifteen years of his life unpublished and unable to produce the novels, stories and essays that are now part of the canon of American literature. Using correspondence between Pinker and James, and most importantly, Pinker and the primary publishers of James’s work from 1898 until Pinker’s death in 1922, along with secondary works noting the context of the agent’s endeavors during this period, this study demonstrates the link between Pinker’s work and James’s continued presence in print, both during the author’s lifetime and after his death. Most of the correspondence included in this study remain unpublished and have not been previously examined, and no one has presented James’s or Pinker’s correspondence as proof of the value and necessity of the author’s business relationship with Pinker to his success as an author towards the end of his life. Two studies offer background material for this dissertation but do not use the primary documents herein or deal with Pinker’s work for James at any length. In Friction With the Market, Michael Anesko explores James’s career as a professional writer with brief mention of Pinker’s role. In his introduction, he explains that “novelists 1 2 write to be purchased and read”1 and, to summarize the point of his study in brief, James was no exception, whether or not he wanted to admit it to himself or others. Anesko uses publishers’ records, documents noting James’s literary income, and correspondence between James and his publishers to make his case that James, while clinging to his desire to be seen as a creative artist, struggled with the idea of professionalism, which would measure his success by readership and income rather than talent. His refusal to cheapen his craft did not, however, deter him from negotiating rather manipulatively with a variety of publishers to find the best financial deal for his material. These contradictory impulses, Anesko claims, are reflected in James’s novels, specifically The Princess Casamassima (1886) and The Tragic Muse (1890), wherein his characters suffer the same conflict between art and commercialism that the author was attempting to reconcile within himself. James’s biography of Hawthorne, which was not flattering, is also addressed, but as an example of James’s desire to be more sophisticated in his business arrangements than his subject, preventing the poverty of purse and notice his predecessor had endured. Anesko focuses on James’s work and efforts through 1893, shortly after his sister Alice died and he inherited her share of the family wealth, thus, according to Anesko, relieving his financial concerns and therefore the necessity of pursuing top dollar for his material. Unlike Anesko’s work, the present study uses correspondence between Pinker and publishers in relation to James and his writing beginning in 1898, five years 1 Michael Anesko, Friction With the Market: Henry James and the Profession of Authorship. (New York, Oxford UP, 1986) vii. 3 after Anesko claims James enjoyed financial security, a security that James immediately revealed to Pinker did not exist, at least on a psychological level. While Anesko makes little note of Pinker’s role, the correspondence shows that without the agent, James would not have produced and sold the work of his later years (including the work he considered his masterpiece, The Ambassadors) and would have suffered from a fear of the same impoverishment Hawthorne endured. Mary Ann Gillies’s The Professional Literary Agent in Britain, 1880-1920, on the other hand, uses publishers’ and literary agents’ archives to show how vital the role of the literary agent (in general) was during this time period, both in the careers of specific authors and in the changing course of the publishing world. The necessity of the literary middleman is addressed in terms of changes in taxation, printing technology, and increasing literacy rates, all of which added up to a larger, more complicated market of opportunities for authors in an increasing field of competition. A.P. Watt, as the first professional agent (beginning, officially, in 1881), is credited with establishing the policies of agents, including the 10% fee that became a standard (one that Pinker adhered to as well), and his experience as an advertising agent gave him an awareness of the publishers’ needs in regard to marketing that would allow him to represent both authors and publishers. His ability to work both sides of the fence, so to speak, did not necessarily endear him to authors like James, who, as shown in this study, preferred the attentions of Pinker, who worked solely in the interests of his author. Gilles discusses Pinker’s role as an alternative to Watt, who preferred to represent established and 4 successful authors, as offering new talent, as well as female writers, an opportunity to prove themselves in the market. Pinker saw potential if not necessarily financial gain, and his approach opened the door to many authors who would not have seen their work in print without his assistance. The working relationship between Watt and Lucas Malet is considered, in contrast to that of Pinker and two of his clients, Joseph Conrad and Somerville and Ross (the writing team of Violet Martin and Edith Somerville). Gillies marks Pinker’s role not only as literary agent for these authors but as consultant in a variety of personal affairs that would have, unresolved, interfered with the writers’ abilities to produce material for him to sell. For Conrad, Pinker was a banker and payer of bills, and on occasion travel agent. Somerville and Ross enjoyed the social company of the friendly Pinker, inviting him to hunt on the Somerville family estate. The women were nearly impoverished and stressed with domestic duties; Pinker offered praise for their creative efforts and practical advice on selling the Somerville art collection and homes, for which he often found buyers. Pinker’s work for James, however, is not addressed in such detail, necessitating the need for the current study, and his attention to James, entirely different to that of the other authors he represented, shows his ability to individualize his work to provide the best service to each client, that is, the service that allowed them to
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