Taking it up again  Margaret Anne Doody    • Henry James and
Revision by Philip Horne     Oxford, 373 pp, £40.00, December
1990, ISBN 0 19 812871 1  Why do they do it? Why would they ever
want to? Why do novelists revise novels? The very thought of
revising one is daunting. Yet of course novelists do revise
their printed works, on occasion, for various reasons. No
novelist has made such a job of it as Henry James.  In July 1905
he began the task of revising his life’s work, in order to
create a final statement, a complete collection of his works,
called from its inception the New York Edition. James actually
believed that this gigantic labour would be financially
rewarding, would provide financial security for his old age. The
New York Edition in 24 volumes, completed in 1909, was not a
success, and by the autumn of 1908 he had to realise that his
task was thankless, his art unappreciated. As Philip Horne
convincingly shows us, however, James’s most powerful motives
were far from mercenary. He was driven by t