ABSTRACT
America, Europe; realism, romance; the ideal, the material: the Jamesian ghostly troubles familiar distinctions, inviting us to grasp the interplay of absence and presence, reality and imagination. Both romancers and realists were fascinated by the more obvious instances of nineteenth-century transformation: by photography and telegraphy, by electricity and magnetism. ‘Romance’ was in play from the outset of James’s literary career. Indeed, “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes”, Henry James’s first ghost story, appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1868—less than four years after the death of Hawthorne and just over a year before the birth of Algernon Black-wood. “The Turn of the Screw” was James’s sixth ghostly tale and remains by far his best known. The idea for the story was provided by Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, on the evening of 10 January 1895. The last ghost story to be written by James was “The Jolly Corner”.
