_COPYRIGHT
1917_
[Illustration]
_PREFACE_
THE SENSE OF THE PAST, _the second of the two novels which Henry James
left unfinished, had been planned and begun some years before he died.
The two first books and a part of the third had been written, and it
appears that the idea had been abandoned for accidental reasons, not
because he was himself dissatisfied with it. He went back to it again
during the first winter of the war, having found that in the conditions
he could not then go on with_ The Ivory Tower _and hoping that he might
be able to work upon a story of remote and phantasmal life. He
re-dictated, with slight modifications, the chapters already written,
and continued the book at intervals until the autumn of 1915. He was
then engaged for a time on other work--the introduction to the_ Letters
from America of Rupert Brooke. _He had just finished this and was
preparing to return immediately to_ The Sense of the Past _when on
December 2 he was attacked by his last illness. The later chapters of
the novel, as they stand, had not been finally revised by him; but it
was never his habit to make more than verbal changes at that stage._
_The notes on the course which the book was to follow were dictated when
he reached the point where the original draft broke off. These notes are
given in full; their part in Henry James's method of work is indicated
in the preface to_ The Ivory Tower.
_PERCY LUBBOCK._
CONTENTS
THE SENSE OF THE PAST
BOOK FIRST
BOOK SECOND
BOOK THIRD
BOOK FOURTH
Notes for THE SENSE OF THE PAST