Henry James's novella, "The Aspern Papers," tells the story of a literary critic's obsessive quest for the letters of a deceased Romantic poet. It is celebrated for its psychological depth and intricate narrative structure, exploring themes of obsession, ethics, and the nature of literary legacy.
Sources for Henry James — The Aspern Papers
Henry James — The Aspern Papers in Fiction Set in Libraries
Held in the Fiction Set in Libraries chamber of the Babel Nexus Index.
- Washington Irving — The Mutability of Literature (from The Sketch Book) (1820)
- Gustave Flaubert — Bibliomania (1837)
- Charles Nodier — The Bibliomaniac (Le Bibliomane) (1841)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne — A Virtuoso’s Collection (from Mosses from an Old Manse) (1842)
- Anatole France — The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)
- Eugene Field — The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac (1896)
- Anatole France — Penguin Island (1908)
- Edmund Lester Pearson — The Old Librarian’s Almanack (1909)
- M. R. James — The Tractate Middoth (from More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary) (1911)
- William Thomas Lowndes — The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature (Bohn ed.) (1864)
- Isaac Asimov — Encyclopedia Galactica (in-universe device of the Foundation cycle) (1951)
- Gordon R. Dickson — The Final Encyclopedia (Childe Cycle) (1984)