The Henry James Encyclopedia is a handy reference work, but the words
ready reference cannot adequately convey the generosity with which Robert Gale
annotates important items in this volume. Many of the entries are substantial
articles. The remarkable entry on The American Scene is over 4,000 words; there
are 3,000 words on George Eliot; some 2,000 on Zola. Even comparatively
minor entries are richly informative. In the 500 or so words on Abbey, for
instance, we get a summary of the painter's career, of his friendship with James,
of James's published comments on him (three different items--one a newspaper
column--with enough bibliographical information on each to lead us to James's
original remarks should we wish to consult them), along with the information
that "it is believed that James helped Abbey's wife write a catalogue for some
of the panels of The Quest of the Holy Grail by her husband, designed for the
Boston public library and exhibited in London in 1895. And, for a further, brief
example, in the entry on Thomas Sargeant Perry, Gale tells us where we can
find Henry James's letters to his boyhood friend (in the appendix to Virginia Harlow's
1950 biography of Perry).

To prepare this encyclopedia, Professor Gale has read "all of James"--the
self-deprecating quotation marks are his own, in his preface to the volume. But
more has been required than a reading through of all of Henry James, though
that in itself is no mean achievement (one that I would guess has been matched
by no more than half a dozen persons since Henry James himself). The Henry
James Encyclopedia is the fruit of Robert Gale's lifetime saturation in Henry
James. He began by reading James as an undergraduate in the 1930s, wrote on
James for his master's and his doctorate, published a fine critical study of James
( The Caught Image: Figurative Language in the Fiction of Henry James), also
published a Henry James reference work of narrower scope than the present
volume ( Plots and Characters in the Fiction of Henry James), wrote the James
chapters in the Duke University annual American Literary Scholarship for a
decade, and continues to serve on the editorial board of the Henry James Review
(offering me, as HJR editor, some of the liveliest, most acute, and most con-
structive reader's reports it has ever been my pleasure to read and to pass on to
those who have submitted work to the journal). Professor Gale's continuing
immersion in James studies is a warrant that the information in the Henry James
Encyclopedia is abreast of current scholarship. For example, in his entry on
Baron Lyon Playfair ( 1818- 1898), Gale notes that James Pocket Diaries
indicate that James continued to socialize with Lady Playfair into the 1910s."
For this information, Gale has drawn on the recently published Complete Note-
books of Henry James ( 1987), where the editors ( Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers)
first made James's pocket diaries available.

As an editor who has relied on Robert Gale's advice throughout the decade
during which I have known him, I have been very much in his debt. As a student
of Henry James, I find that I am now inestimably more so because of the Henry
James Encyclopedia, as will be everyone who admires the work of this great
author and who wishes to know more about that work, about its creator, and

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