This calendar appears on-line almost a decade after the compilation of a much more modest thing, a calendar of James's published letters alone. I would need yet another database to list fully, much less to acknowledge properly, all of the assistance--from fellow James scholars, colleagues, librarians, curators, executors, funding agencies, friends, and family members--that has sustained and strengthened this project in the intervening years. Therefore I acknowledge here only those contributions that were timely, long-suffering, or, plainly put, negotiable, while silently offering my sincere thanks to the countless librarians, curators, archivists, microfilmers, and research assistants who performed, frequently gratis, most of the heavy lifting for this project.

From Dan Fogel and Alfred Habegger came the necessary encouragement to continue working with James's letters when I was tempted to consider my labors done. From Alexander James, the late literary executor of the James estate, came the unrestricted permission of the estate to examine and to photocopy letters as need be. Similar cooperation has been forthcoming from Bay James, the current executor of the estate, who also kindly provided copies of many family-owned letters. I thank as well Mr. & Mrs. Henry James Vaux of Berkeley, California, who granted me access to family letters in their possession, who provided a sunny corner of their living room in which to work, and who insured the availability of convenient accommodations at the UC-Berkeley Faculty Club.

Perhaps no single moment was more serendipitous than when Cathy Henderson of the University of Texas’s Ransom Center alerted me to the parallel labors of Philip Horne, of University College, London, whose new and magisterially edited selection of James letters is soon to appear. He has since been unstinting with his notes, with his enormous knowledge of James and the James epistolarium, and with his wise advice for the project. The 1993 Sesquicentennnial Celebration in New York of James's birth was another fortuitous moment, bringing timely aid and expertise to the project in the person of Susan Gunter. She little reckoned the labor that would ensue when she offered to compile a biographical register of James’s correspondents. What was originally envisioned as an appendage to the calendar soon evolved into an exhaustive and invaluable reference work in its own right, surpassing in scope and detail anything hitherto compiled on the range of James’s epistolary relations. The Sesquicentennial conference brought needed impetus to the project as well, as a determined group of scholars and biographers gathered to insist upon the need for a complete edition of James’s letters—and upon the calendar as a necessary first step toward that goal. In the aftermath of the conference, the energetic support and persuasive letters of Fred Kaplan, Sheldon Novick, and Richard Hocks were crucial to my search for major funding for the project. I have also benefited enormously from the frequent assistance of Michael Anesko, George Monteiro, Rayburn Moore, and Rosella Mamoli Zorzi.

The late Leon Edel supported the project from the outset, first inviting me to spend a month amidst the accumulated research notes in his Honolulu basement and then insuring my access to his papers once they were transferred to McGill University in Montreal. There, Dr. Richard Virr of the McLennan Library's Department of Rare Books and Special Collections marked the passing of a year by my seasonal appearances on his doorstep for yet another week's work among the papers.

Extensive work with James's letters at the Houghton Library would have not been possible without the assistance of Alan Heimert, former Master of Eliot House and Keeper of the F. O. Matthiessen Room, who permitted extended stays in the affordable and accessible Eliot House quarters once occupied by Matthiessen. Similarly, repeated trips to Princeton and to New York-area repositories were possible only through the many kindnesses of Pat Jobe and Andrea Wayda of Westfield, New Jersey. Martin Antonetti and Eric Holzenberg of the Grolier Club permitted me to ransack their extensive holdings of auction house catalogs. And David, Meg, and Philip Jackson and Robin Carter of Austin, Texas were the best of hosts during a most pleasant visit to the Ransom Center at the University of Texas.

Lynda Dryden of Edinburgh took time from her work on Conrad to extricate copies of James letters in the National Library of Scotland before it closed for remodeling. Rebecca Tuttle of the Huntington Library was enormously patient in her efforts to resolve various cruxes about the James holdings there. Adeline Tintner of New York City cleared a corner of her dining room table, which has birthed many a study of James, in order to allow me to examine her significant collection of letters before they passed to the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. A thorough cataloging of that collection was possible only with the help of Peter Walker of Salem State College, who has since gone out of his way on numerous occasions to facilitate my work. Walker and Greg Zacharias of Creighton University deserve special mention not merely for aid rendered but for assuming the herculean labor of carrying the calendar to its fitting culmination in a complete edition of James’s letters.

Especially grateful acknowledgment is made of those whose support was both tangible and negotiable. From the National Endowment for the Humanities came "seed money" for the project in the form of a 1990 grant from the former "Travel to Collections" program. For generous and unfailing financial support in every year since 1990, I thank Hanover College, particularly my colleagues on the Faculty Development Committee. The NEH again favored the project in 1995 with a grant from its Division of Research Programs (Grant RT-21776-95) that hastened work on both the calendar and on Susan Gunter's accompanying biographical register.

In the late stages of this project a cadre of student assistants—Korin Ewing, Brianne Ward, John Connell, and Mandy Blythe—ably labored to transfer a decade’s worth of data from my office floor to the appropriate files and databases. Subsequently, Doug Clayton and Joe Steinbach of the University of Nebraska Press were instrumental in seeing that data made it from my desk to the world in an efficient, professional, and highly accessible manner.

Finally, neither assistants nor technology can help me to figure my unaccountable debts to my wife and to my son, Terry and Phillip, who, in living so long with the calendar, have necessarily lived too long without me. By their presence I have been continually blessed.

Steven H. Jobe