The Jolly Corner
About this book
The Jolly Corner was first published in 1908 in The English Review. Henry James describes the adventures of Spencer Brydon as he explores the empty New York house where he grew up. He encounters a "sensation more complex than had ever before found itself consistent with sanity." The Jolly Corner is the nickname he gave to his childhood home. Brydon begins to believe that his alter ego-the ghost of the man he might have been is haunting the house. The theme of unlived lives runs throughout the story.Excerpt:"Every one asks me what I 'think' of everything," said Spencer Brydon; "and I make answer as I can-begging or dodging the question, putting them off with any nonsense. It wouldn't matter to any of them really," he went on, "for, even were it possible to meet in that stand-and-deliver way so silly a demand on so big a subject, my 'thoughts' would still be almost altogether about something that concerns only myself." He was talking to Miss Staverton, with whom for a couple of months now he had availed himself of every possible occasion to talk; this disposition and this resource, this comfort and support, as the situation in fact presented itself, having promptly enough taken the first place in the considerable array of rather unattenuated surprises attending his so strangely belated return to America.