THE SENSE OF THE PAST BY HENRY JAMES LONDON: 48 PALL MALL W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD. GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND _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 THE SENSE OF THE PAST BOOK FIRST