Jobe, Steve 1956- (Steven H. Jobe)

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Jobe, Steve 1956- (Steven H. Jobe)

PERSONAL:

Born 1956; married; wife's name Terry; children: Phillip. Education: University of the South, B.A., 1978; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, M.A., 1981, Ph.D., 1988.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English, Hanover College, P.O. Box 108, Hanover, IN 47243. E-mail—jobe@hanover.edu.

CAREER:

Educator and writer. Hanover College, Hanover, IN, professor of English, 1990—.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Susan E. Gunter) A Calendar of the Letters of Henry James and a Biographical Register of Henry James's Correspondents (online database), University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1999.

(Editor, with Susan E. Gunter) Dearly Beloved Friends: Henry James's Letters to Younger Men, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 2001.

Contributor to books, including Henry James and Homo-erotic Desire, edited by John Bradley, Macmillan (London, England), 1999. Contributor of articles to journals, including Studies in American Fiction, Henry James Review, and American Literary Realism.

SIDELIGHTS:

A professor of English at Hanover College, Steve Jobe specializes in literature from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing particularly on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James. Since the early 1990s, Jobe has written extensively on topics related to the works of Henry James, contributing to various periodicals, books, and online resources. He worked with Susan E. Gunter to create the online A Calendar of the Letters of Henry James and a Biographical Register of Henry James's Correspondents. The resource provides access to a database of James's personal letters, biographical details about the letters' recipients, and information on where original copies of the letters are kept.

Jobe collaborated with Gunter once again to compile and annotate a selection of those letters in Dearly Beloved Friends: Henry James's Letters to Younger Men. Jobe and Gunter carefully chose 166 letters written by James to four young correspondents, providing insight into the prominent author's passions and torments. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly remarked that the book's "elegant introductory remarks and helpful footnotes provide crucial context and background information not necessarily available in letters that focus on physical well-being, travel plans and social news." Jim Marks wrote in a review for the Lambda Book Report that "the correspondence is beautifully edited, lavishly footnoted, and abounding in useful information." Writing for Victorian Studies, Dennis Denisoff remarked that the "power of the book lies in the selection, editing, and publication of these pieces" and that the editors do "an excellent job of annotating and presenting the letters chosen for inclusion." Denisoff added: "The amount of archival work that this compilation required is impressive and the depth and precision of their research never wanes. The majority of the notes, moreover, are informative, convenient, and succinct, reflecting the editor's familiarity with James's works and life."