Introduction & Overview of The Jolly Corner

This Study Guide consists of approximately 68 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Jolly Corner.

Introduction & Overview of The Jolly Corner

This Study Guide consists of approximately 68 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Jolly Corner.
This section contains 180 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy The Jolly Corner Study Guide

The Jolly Corner Summary & Study Guide Description

The Jolly Corner Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:

This detailed literature summary also contains Bibliography on The Jolly Corner by Henry James.

First published in the inaugural issue of The English Review in 1908, "The Jolly Corner" also appeared the following year in the definitive New York edition of James's work. The main character of the story, Spencer Brydon, is a middle-aged man who returns to his birthplace of New York City. He has lived abroad for thirty-three years, and while visiting his childhood home—situated on "a jolly corner"— he questions if leaving the States was the best decision. He walks around the vacant house late at night, wondering about what could have been. The story reaches a climax when he believes that he is being haunted by his alter ego.

Some critics praise James's creation of a ghost story worthy of Edgar Allan Poe with "The Jolly Corner." The protagonist's decision to move from his homeland echoes the lives of famous, romanticized writers who died far from home—Percy B. Shelley, Lord Byron and Margaret Fuller—and foreshadows the themes and experiences of other great expatriate writers—Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and James Baldwin.

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This section contains 180 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
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The Jolly Corner from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.