Henry James remained throughout his life focused on his boyhood and early manhood, and correspondingly on younger boys and men, and John R. Bradley illustrates how it is in the context of such narcissism that James consistently dealt with male desire in his fiction. He also traces a more subtle but related trajectory in James's writing from a Classical to a Modernist gay discourse, which in turn is shown to have been paralleled by a shift in James's fiction from naturalistic beginnings to later stylistic evasion and obscurity. This radical book, which covers the whole of James's career, will quickly be recognized as a defining text in this emerging field of James studies.

JOHN R. BRADLEY was educated at University College London, Dartmouth College and Exeter College, Oxford. He was editor of the London Quarterly (1994-97) and has contributed essays and reviews to many newspapers and journals in Britain and the United States. He has edited two collections of essays: Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire (1999) and Henry James on the Stage and Screen (2000).

Textual Note List of Abbreviations Critical Hostility Defining James's Homosexuality Whitman, Pater and the Importance of Being Manly in the Early Fiction John Addington Symonds and 'The Author of Beltraffio ' Public Scandals, Private Dilemmas The Uses of Obscurity Bibliography Index