This generous omnium-gatherum brings together all the writings William James published that have not appeared in previous volumes of this definitive edition of his works. Miscellaneous and diverse though the pieces are, they are unified by James's style and personality, which shine through even the slightest of them.

The volume includes 25 essays, 44 letters to the editor commenting on sundry topics, and 113 reviews of a wide range of works in English, French, German, and Italian. Twenty-three of the items are not recorded in any bibliography of James's writings. Two of the new...

The more than fifty articles, essays, and reviews in this volume, collected here for the first time, were published by William James over a span of some twenty-five years. The record of a sustained interest in phenomena of a highly controversial nature, they make it amply clear that James's work in psychical research was not an eccentric hobby but a serious and sympathetic concern. James was broad-minded in his approach but tough-minded in his demand that investigations be conducted in rigorous scientific terms. He hoped his study of psychic phenomena would strengthen the philosophy of an...

Essays in Philosophy brings together twenty-one essays, reviews, and occasional pieces published by James between 1876 and 1910. They range in subject from a concern with the teaching of philosophy and appraisals of philosophers to analyses of important problems.

Several of the essays, like "The Sentiment of Rationality" and "The Knowing of Things Together," are of particular significance in the development of the views of James's later works. All of them, as John McDermott says in his Introduction, are in a style that is "engaging and personal...witty, acerbic, compassionate,...

The twenty-nine articles, essays, and reviews in this volume, collected here for the first time, were published by William James over a long span of years, from 1878 (twelve years prior to The Principles of Psychology) to 1906. Some are theoretical; others examine specific psychological phenomena or report the results of experiments James had conducted.

Written for the most part for a scholarly rather than a popular audience, they exhibit James's characteristic lucidity and persuasiveness, and they reveal the roots and development of his view on a wide range of psychological...

Essays in Religion and Morality brings together a dozen papers of varying length to these two themes so crucial to the life and thought of William James. Reflections on the two subjects permeate, first, James's presentation of his father's Literary Remains; second, his writings on human immortality and the relation between reason and faith; third, his two memorial pieces, one on Robert Gould Shaw and the other on Emerson; fourth, his consideration of the energies and powers of human life; and last, his writings on the possibilities of peace, especially as found in his famous...

When William James died in 1910 he left a large body of manuscript material that has never appeared in print. Much of it is of biographical interest only, but the largest part is concerned with James's work. The present volume, the first of two that will bring The Works of William James to completion, includes the manuscripts devoted to work in progress on philosophical and psychological subjects. The last volume will bring together the manuscripts relating to James's public lectures and teaching.

The most important of these manuscripts are those of the years 1903 and 1904...

The publication in 1890 of William James's acknowledged masterpiece marked a turning point in the development of psychology as a science in America. The Principles of Psychology also became a source of inspiration in philosophy, literature, and the arts. When John Dewey reviewed it, he predicted that it would rank "as a permanent classic, like Locke's Essay and Hume's Treatise."

Its stature undiminished after ninety-one years, The Principles of Psychology appears now in a new, handsome edition with an authoritative text that corrects the hundreds of...

Today's scholars know James's psychology primarily through his great Principles of Psychology (1890), but those who studied the subject at the turn of the century were more apt to learn his view through his Psychology: Briefer Course (1892). Indeed, professors at colleges and universities throughout the United States use this book--which their students labeled "Jimmy" to distinguish it from the larger "James"--in their classes, and more than six times as many copies of the Briefer Course were sold by 1902 as were sets of Principles.

Despite its title, the...

Some Problems of Philosophy, William James's last book, was published after his death in 1910. For years he had talked of rounding out his philosophical work with a treatise on metaphysics. Characteristically, he chose to do so in the form of an introduction to the problems of philosophy, because writing for beginners would force him to be nontechnical and readable. The result is that, although this is James's most systematic and abstract work, it has all the lucidity of his other, more popular writings. Step by step the reader is introduced, through analysis of the fundamental...