Here's a question: who do you suppose wrote the following pitiful scene?

A restless, sad, longing little heart was beating under a worn calico dress, in a little room in Fourth Street. Tears as warm and grief swollen as any that gush from woman's eyes crept down the cheek a little farther, waited, trembled, and then swelling as the bosom swells with sighs, ran down the maiden's cheek, and fell upon the faded chintz.

You guessed it. Who could it be but Henry James? There would be no shame in your not recognising this as James's work, however: it has languished in peaceful obscurity for more than 140 years, only now to have its authorship revealed by Floyd Horowitz, recently retired from the English department at Hunter College, New York. The passage is the opening of a story called 'Alone' that appeared - anonymously - in the Newport Mercury of 27 July 1861, and has been resurrected and attributed to James by Professor Horowitz in The Uncollected Henry James: Newly Discovered Stories (Duckworth, £20). The unhappy maiden is a seamstress in love with her employer.

LRB 23 September 2004 | PDF Download