In order to get a more fully developed understanding of the context in which Henry James’s writings were composed, printed, published and read, it is necessary to consider the formation of a highly diverse mass reading public and the industrialization of book production and distribution that turned late nineteenth-century publishing into a veritable boom industry.

James’s career witnessed the demise of the three-volume novel (c. 1895), the development of the modern paperback, the passing of international copyright laws (the US International Copyright Act of 1891), the rise and descent of literary journals, the advent of advertisement-funded and syndicated daily newspapers, the founding of the Society of Authors in Britain (1884), and the entry of the literary agent between authors and publishers: by the end of the century, business in the republic of letters was thoroughly industrialized and professionalized, stimulating and generating an unprecedented consumer market for literature. The forms and content of James’s work reflected and were greatly influenced by these changes in the print culture of his time.