“The Jolly Corner”
Spencer Brydon returns to New York City after an absence of thirty years, wondering what his life would have been like if he had never left. He is about to find out when he confronts that doppelganger in his empty home on the corner.
“In the Cage”
An unnamed telegraph operator lives a life of fantasy inside her mind in which she has developed a love/hate relationship with the society types who frequent the department store in which she is employed. Recognizing their shallow qualities, she is nonetheless stimulated to seek entry into that sphere. But dare she leave her boring fiancé for a dream that is almost certainly never to be realized?
“The Birthplace”
A bored librarian jumps at the offer to become the tour guide at Shakespeare’s home, but grows concerned about the factual basis of his daily spiel. Recognizing that the people want fiction more than fact, he takes things to another level and the tourists flock.
“The Romance of Certain Old Clothes”
A tale of revenge from the grave? Mr. Lloyd must choose between two beautiful sisters for a wife. He picks one, but at the moment she is giving birth from which she will perish, she knows he is with her sister. Mr. Lloyd ends his life as a widower by marrying the other sister. Things do not go well. Coincidence?
John and May enjoy a lifelong platonic friendship during which romance is never spoken of, much less engaged. John complains to May that he feels his life is one of waiting for some sinister arrival of “the beast in the jungle.” She dies, he comes to visit her grave and learns there what the metaphorical beast has been all along.
“Brooksmith”
The narrator recalls the life of the title character, a butler in charge of organizing a men’s salon for good conversation and fine wine. Brooksmith’s abilities at organizing this salon attains the level of art and so when his employer dies and there is no more salon to manage, he spirals into a suicidal decline.
“The Tree of Knowledge”
A tale of two perspectives on illusion and happiness. Morgan Mallow is a sculptor of low opinion by critics. Peter, his friend, wants to keep Mallow’s wife and son from discovering this by convincing the mother not to send the boy to Paris to study art. There, he learns of his father’s reputation. Peter discovers that it is he who has been living an illusion when it turns out that Mrs. Mallow knew how her husband’s art was viewed all along.
“The Real Thing”
A painter whose artistic subject is high society is surprised when an aristocratic couple fallen on hard times ask to become paid models. He tries, but their reality of high society keeps usurping his artistic vision. So he turns to his models of a lower order to represent the higher order.
“The Pupil”
Mr. Pemberton is hired to tutor a sickly young man named Morgan Moreen. It turns out that Morgan dislikes his parents as much as Pemberton and so they make plans to go away together. It is a homosexual relationship or something even more complex?
“A Bundle of Letters”
One of James’ unusual forays into comic writing, it delivers what it promises. The story is told through a series of letters written by residents of a boarding house in Paris. Lacking a recognizable plot, the story derives its humor and interest from the way the characters undercut each other within the privacy of their epistles.
“The Middle Years”
The Countess is infatuated with Dr. Hugh, charge with administering to the health of the older woman. While doing so, Dr. Hugh meets the author of a novel he admires who collapses upon their first meeting. He shifts his attention away from the Countess and to the author at a severe cost to his future financial situation, but at the price of giving the author satisfaction with a life he had considered only half-lived.
