Henry James, “The Altar of the Dead”

Mhairi Catriona Pooler (University of Aberdeen)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1895

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United States (Country of Origin)

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“The Altar of the Dead” is a tale about a man who lives more with what he calls “his Dead” than he does with the living. Published in the collection

Terminations

in 1895, the tale anticipates the themes of obsession, the double and self-haunting in Henry James’s two later masterpieces “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903) and “The Jolly Corner” (1908). While “The Altar of the Dead” can be read as one of James’s multitude of “quasi-supernatural” tales in which an unseen reality has precedence over the material world, as Clifton Fadiman has noted “the tale is crowded, not with terror, but with love” (259).

Having lost his fiancé, Mary Antrim, before they could be wed, George Stransom faithfully remembers the anniversary of her death every year. One day Stransom

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1116 words

Citation: Pooler, Mhairi Catriona. "“The Altar of the Dead”". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1615, accessed 02 December 2024.]

Henry James, “The Altar of the Dead”

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