An Eye for Genius: James Brand Pinker and Henry James

Summary

A middle aged author declining in popularity. An up and coming literary agent with an eye for genius. A partnership that would forge a prodigious legacy in American literature. 

Henry James was a middle-aged author who had established himself on a transatlantic scale when he employed James Brand Pinker as his literary agent in 1898. The changing preferences of a growing audience of readers along with James’s self-defeating practice of shifting from publisher to publisher, rather than adhering to the trade courtesy of remaining loyal to one house, were making the author’s efforts to keep his work in print increasingly difficult; bringing Pinker, who managed the literary business of over 100 authors including Stephen Crane, H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, and Jack London, into the picture made it possible for James to maintain a presence before the reading public to an extent that would have been impossible without the agent’s assistance.

Pinker’s involvement was vital to the continuance of James’s career, as his later works and the New York Edition proved difficult material to place. The agent’s role as the mediator of conflict between the commercial writer and literary artist, positions that James had difficulty reconciling, had considerable influence on the shape of James’s later career and thus the way in which the author is remembered; James’s legacy is therefore clearly tied to Pinker’s efforts.

Using correspondence between Pinker, James, and the primary publishers of James’s material from 1898 until Pinker’s death in 1922, along with secondary works addressing the agent’s endeavors during this period, this volume demonstrates the link between Pinker’s work and James’s continued presence in print, both during the author’s lifetime and after his death.