From: Christopher Tidwell (ENG)

> I like Raphael's suggestion,
> > >From W. Logan's essay on Stevens and Eliot:
> > I'm not sure 'supersubtle' is a word Eliot used much. To me, it's
definitely
> > Jamesian,
> mainly because it invokes James' fussiness and propensity for the ornate,
> but isn't the term actually Elizabethan, or rather Shakespearean?

I don't know when or where the term first appeared. But I know for certain
that James used it - though he may have been quoting someone's comment on
his work. This is from the preface to 'The Lesson of the Master':

'I have already mentioned the particular rebuke once addressed to me on all
this ground, the question of where on earth, where roundabout us at this
hour, I had "found" my Neil Paradays, my Ralph Limberts, my Hugh Verekers
and other such supersubtle fry (...) If the life about us for the last
thirty years refuses to warrant for these examples, then so much the worse
for life. '

Yours,

Raphaël
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