Radical Henry James
Writing nearly four decades ago in the Henry James Review, Darshan Singh Maini, in an essay on, “The Politics of Henry James,” observed that “it is difficult to imagine Henry James in relation to any kind of politics, feudal, parliamentary, radical, charismatic, or messianic” (158). Perhaps unsurprisingly, James’s two most explicitly political novels–The Bostonians (1886) and The Princess Casamassima (1886)--have most often been treated as anomalous parts of his oeuvre, and together are often read as signs of James’s deep skepticism about (or lack of real interest in) radical movements and ultimately, in Alex Beringer’s words, “[his] final rejection of political and social radicalism” (37).