The present volume, Robert L. Gale Henry James Encyclopedia, is the greatest
single compilation of knowledge about Henry James and about James's world
since the completion of Leon Edel Life of Henry James nearly twenty years
ago. To gauge the magnitude of Professor Gale's undertaking, we have only to
consider for a moment the life and contacts of Henry James: the nearly 80 books
and 600 periodical contributions he published, the 15,000 odd extant letters, the
wide and changing networks of acquaintances, colleagues, and friends in Amer-
ica, England, France, and Italy. Dauntlessly rising to the challenge presented
by the myriad data of James's life, the encyclopedist has provided us here with
a compendium of information on James's publications (his travel writing and
journalism and his literary and art criticism as well as his fiction), his plots and
characters, his correspondents, his residences, friendships, professional associ-
ations, his judgments of his contemporaries and predecessors in literary art, his
publishers, even his domestic servants.

This should have been, one thinks at first, a task for many hands. The sheer
vastness of the Jamesian imperium would, one thinks, defeat the encyclopedic
labors of any single scholar. But Professor Gale's achievement annihilates such
initial misgivings. We ourselves might be defeated by such an undertaking. But
he has succeeded magnificently. From A to Z, from Edwin Austin Abbey to
Émile Zola, here is everything we have ever wanted to have in the way of a
ready-reference volume on Henry James, well over 3,000 entries by my rough
count, in one alphabetical, cross-referenced sequence, plus a dozen helpful ap-
pendices that group entry terms under convenient headings (for example, "Art-
ists, Sculptors, Architects, and Photographers Mentioned by James" and
"Friends of James").

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