Abstract
Henry James’s first book of travel writings, Transatlantic Sketches (1875), was published in the same year as his first collection of stories, A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales, and the serialization of Roderick Hudson. The American Scene (1907) and several of the essays included in Italian Hours (1909) belong to late James, written after the novelist had achieved what most critics consider to be his finest aesthetic achievements, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl. Between the publication of these volumes other collections of travel writings appeared: Foreign Parts (1883), Portraits of Places (1883), A Little Tour in France (1884), and English Hours (1905), all comprised of sketches and essays initially offered to periodicals in the United States and England over four decades of the author’s writing life.