Being a Boy Again identifies a literary genre that flourished between the Civil War and World War I--the American boy book. Jacobson distinguishes the boy book tradition from the didactic story for boys and the developmental autobiography of childhood, describing it as an autobiographical form that concentrates on boyhood alone. She discusses what gave rise to the boy book, what forms it took, what problems it addressed, and finally, why it disappeared.

Jacobson finds her answers in the widespread social and economic changes of the second half of the 19th century, as well...

The author considers James s work from The Bostonians to The Awkward Age from 1883 to 1889 a period in which James was resident in London and searching for material to replace the international theme. Jacobson considers this context in relation to the emergence of a mass market and sees James s major fiction of this period as an attempt to exploit the conventions of popular fiction in an analysis of his society s assumptions. James s work at this time must also be viewed as an artist s effort to secure popular attention and acceptance.