Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between
literary realism
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with ...
and
literary modernism
Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented ...
, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of
Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
and diarist
Alice James
Alice James (August 7, 1848 – March 6, 1892) was an American diarist, sister of novelist Henry James and philosopher and psychologist William James. Her relationship with William was unusually close, and she seems to have been badly affec ...
.
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. Examples of such novels include ''
The Portrait of a Lady'', ''
The Ambassadors
''The Ambassadors'' is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the ''North American Review'' (NAR). The novel is a dark comedy which follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe to bring the son o ...
'', and ''
The Wings of the Dove
''The Wings of the Dove'' is a 1902 novel by Henry James. It tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable ...
''. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to
impressionist painting.
His novella ''
The Turn of the Screw
''The Turn of the Screw'' is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in '' Collier's Weekly'' (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898, it was collected in ''The Two Magics'', published by Macmil ...
'' has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He also wrote other highly regarded ghost stories.
James published articles and books of criticism,
travel
Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel c ...
, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a
British citizen
British nationality law prescribes the conditions under which a person is recognised as being a national of the United Kingdom. The six different classes of British nationality each have varying degrees of civil and political rights, due to the ...
in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901
, ...
in 1911, 1912, and 1916.
Life
Early years, 1843–1883
![Henry James Sr](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Henry_James_Sr._and_Henry_James_Jr._in_1854.jpg)
James was born at 21 Washington Place in New York City on 15 April 1843. His parents were Mary Walsh and Henry James, Sr. His father was intelligent and steadfastly congenial. He was a lecturer and philosopher who had inherited independent means from his father, an
Albany banker and investor. Mary came from a wealthy family long settled in New York City. Her sister Katherine lived with her adult family for an extended period of time. Henry, Jr. was one of four boys, the others being
William
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
, who was one year his senior, and younger brothers Wilkinson (Wilkie) and Robertson. His younger sister was
Alice. Both of his parents were of Irish and Scottish descent.
Before he was a year old, his father sold the house at Washington Place and took the family to Europe, where they lived for a time in a cottage in
Windsor Great Park
Windsor Great Park is a Royal Park of , including a deer park, to the south of the town of Windsor on the border of Berkshire and Surrey in England. It is adjacent to the private Home Park, which is nearer the castle. The park was, for man ...
in England. The family returned to New York in 1845, and Henry spent much of his childhood living between his paternal grandmother's home in Albany, and a house on 14th Street in Manhattan. His education was calculated by his father to expose him to many influences, primarily scientific and philosophical; it was described by Percy Lubbock, the editor of his selected letters, as "extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous." James did not share the usual education in Latin and Greek classics. Between 1855 and 1860, the James household travelled to London, Paris,
Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
,
Boulogne-sur-Mer
Boulogne-sur-Mer (; pcd, Boulonne-su-Mér; nl, Bonen; la, Gesoriacum or ''Bononia''), often called just Boulogne (, ), is a coastal city in Northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department of Pas-de-Calais. Boulogne lies on the ...
, and
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, ...
, according to the father's current interests and publishing ventures, retreating to the United States when funds were low. Henry studied primarily with tutors, and briefly attended schools while the family travelled in Europe. Their longest stays were in France, where Henry began to feel at home and became fluent in French. He had a stutter, which seems to have manifested itself only when he spoke English; in French, he did not stutter.
![Henry James at age16](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Henry_James_at_age16.JPG)
In 1860, the family returned to Newport. There, Henry became a friend of painter
John La Farge
John La Farge (March 31, 1835 – November 14, 1910) was an American artist whose career spanned illustration, murals, interior design, painting, and popular books on his Asian travels and other art-related topics.
La Farge is best known for ...
, who introduced him to French literature, and in particular, to
Balzac. James later called Balzac his "greatest master", and said that he had learned more about the craft of fiction from him than from anyone else.
In the autumn of 1861, James received an injury, probably to his back, while fighting a fire. This injury, which resurfaced at times throughout his life, made him unfit for military service in the American Civil War.
In 1864, the James family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to be near William, who had enrolled first in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard and then in the medical school. In 1862, Henry attended
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.
Each class ...
, but realised that he was not interested in studying law. He pursued his interest in literature and associated with authors and critics
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells (; March 1, 1837 – May 11, 1920) was an American realist novelist, literary critic, and playwright, nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters". He was particularly known for his tenure as editor of ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ...
and
Charles Eliot Norton
Charles Eliot Norton (November 16, 1827 – October 21, 1908) was an American author, social critic, and Harvard professor of art based in New England. He was a progressive social reformer and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries c ...
in Boston and Cambridge, formed lifelong friendships with
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the Un ...
, the future Supreme Court justice, and with
James T. Fields and
Annie Adams Fields
Annie Adams Fields (June 6, 1834 – January 5, 1915) was an American writer. Among her writings are collections of poetry and essays as well as several memoirs and biographies of her literary acquaintances. She was also interested in philanthro ...
, his first professional mentors.
His first published work was a review of a stage performance, "Miss Maggie Mitchell in ''Fanchon the Cricket,''" published in 1863. About a year later, "
A Tragedy of Error", his first short story, was published anonymously. James's first payment was for an appreciation of Sir Walter Scott's novels, written for the ''
North American Review
The ''North American Review'' (NAR) was the first literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others. It was published continuously until 1940, after which it was inactive until revived at ...
''. He wrote fiction and nonfiction pieces for ''
The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' and ''
Atlantic Monthly
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', where Fields was editor. In 1871, he published his first novel, ''
Watch and Ward
''Watch and Ward'' is a short novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1871 and later as a book in 1878. This was James' first novel, though he virtually disowned the book later in life. James later called ...
,'' in serial form in the ''Atlantic Monthly''. The novel was later published in book form in 1878.
During a 14-month trip through Europe in 1869–70, he met
John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...
,
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
,
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the celebrated headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, lit ...
,
William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
, and
George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...
. Rome impressed him profoundly. "Here I am then in the Eternal City," he wrote to his brother William. "At last—for the first time—I live!" He attempted to support himself as a freelance writer in Rome, then secured a position as Paris correspondent for the ''New York Tribune'', through the influence of its editor,
John Hay. When these efforts failed, he returned to New York City. During 1874 and 1875, he published ''Transatlantic Sketches'', ''
A Passionate Pilgrim'', and ''
Roderick Hudson
''Roderick Hudson'' is a novel by Henry James. Originally published between January and December 1875 as a serial in '' The Atlantic Monthly'', it is a bildungsroman that traces the development of the title character, a sculptor.
Plot summary
Ro ...
''. During this early period in his career, he was influenced by
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that t ...
.
In 1875 he headed for Paris and by 1876 he settled in London, where he established relationships with Macmillan and other publishers, who paid for serial installments that they published in book form. The audience for these serialized novels was largely made up of middle-class women, and James struggled to fashion serious literary work within the strictures imposed by editors' and publishers' notions of what was suitable for young women to read. He lived in rented rooms, but was able to join gentlemen's clubs that had libraries and where he could entertain male friends. He was introduced to English society by
Henry Adams
Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918) was an American historian and a member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. Presidents.
As a young Harvard graduate, he served as secretary to his father, Charles Fr ...
and
Charles Milnes Gaskell
Charles George Milnes Gaskell PC (23 January 1842 – 9 January 1919) was an English lawyer and Liberal Party politician.
Milnes Gaskell was born in London, the son of James Milnes Gaskell M.P., of Thornes House, Wakefield, Yorkshire, and Wenloc ...
, the latter introducing him to the
Travellers' and the
Reform Club
The Reform Club is a private members' club on the south side of Pall Mall in central London, England. As with all of London's original gentlemen's clubs, it comprised an all-male membership for decades, but it was one of the first all-male cl ...
s.
[Gamble, Cynthia 2008, John Ruskin, Henry James and the Shropshire Lads, London: New European Publications] He was also an honorary member of the
Savile Club
The Savile Club is a traditional London gentlemen's club founded in 1868. Located in fashionable and historically significant Mayfair, its membership, past and present, include many prominent names.
Changing premises
Initially calling itself t ...
,
St James's Club
The St James's Club was a London gentlemen's club which operated between 1857 and 1978. It was founded by two leading diplomats and its members continued to be largely diplomats and authors. It was first established in Charles Street and moved to ...
and, in 1882, the
Athenaeum Club.
In the fall of 1875, he moved to the
Latin Quarter of Paris. Aside from two trips to America, he spent the next three decades—the rest of his life—in Europe. In Paris, he met
Zola Zola may refer to:
People
* Zola (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* Zola (musician) (born 1977), South African entertainer
* Zola (rapper), French rapper
* Émile Zola, a major nineteenth-century French writer
Plac ...
,
Daudet Daudet is a given name and surname. Notable people with the name include:
People with the surname
* Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897), French novelist
* Célimène Daudet (born 1977), French classical pianist
* Ernest Daudet (1837–1921), French jou ...
,
Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (, ; ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destin ...
,
Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (; rus, links=no, Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́невIn Turgenev's day, his name was written ., p=ɪˈvan sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ tʊrˈɡʲenʲɪf; 9 November 1818 – 3 September 1883 (Old Style dat ...
, and others. He stayed in Paris only a year before moving to London.
In England, he met the leading figures of politics and culture. He continued to be a prolific writer, producing ''
The American'' (1877), ''
The Europeans
''The Europeans: A sketch'' is a short novel by Henry James, published in 1878. It is essentially a comedy contrasting the behaviour and attitudes of two visitors from Europe with those of their relatives living in the "new" world of New England ...
'' (1878), a revision of ''Watch and Ward'' (1878), ''
French Poets and Novelists'' (1878),
''Hawthorne'' (1879), and several shorter works of fiction. In 1878, ''
Daisy Miller
''Daisy Miller'' is a novella by Henry James that first appeared in '' The Cornhill Magazine'' in June–July 1878, and in book form the following year. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a s ...
'' established his fame on both sides of the Atlantic. It drew notice perhaps mostly because it depicted a woman whose behavior is outside the social norms of Europe. He also began his first masterpiece, ''
The Portrait of a Lady'', which appeared in 1881.
In 1877, he first visited
Wenlock Abbey
Wenlock Priory, or St Milburga's Priory, is a ruined 12th-century monastery, located in Much Wenlock, Shropshire, at . Roger de Montgomery re-founded the Priory as a Cluniac house between 1079 and 1082, on the site of an earlier 7th-century mon ...
in Shropshire, home of his friend
Charles Milnes Gaskell
Charles George Milnes Gaskell PC (23 January 1842 – 9 January 1919) was an English lawyer and Liberal Party politician.
Milnes Gaskell was born in London, the son of James Milnes Gaskell M.P., of Thornes House, Wakefield, Yorkshire, and Wenloc ...
, whom he had met through Henry Adams. He was much inspired by the darkly romantic abbey and the surrounding countryside, which feature in his essay “Abbeys and Castles.”
In particular, the gloomy monastic fishponds behind the abbey are said to have inspired the lake in ''
The Turn of the Screw
''The Turn of the Screw'' is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in '' Collier's Weekly'' (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898, it was collected in ''The Two Magics'', published by Macmil ...
''.
While living in London, James continued to follow the careers of the French realists, Émile Zola in particular. Their stylistic methods influenced his own work in the years to come.
Hawthorne's influence on him faded during this period, replaced by George Eliot and Ivan Turgenev.
The period from 1878 to 1881 had the publication of ''The Europeans'', ''
Washington Square'', ''
Confidence
Confidence is a state of being clear-headed either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Confidence comes from a Latin word 'fidere' which means "to trust"; therefore, having ...
'', and ''
The Portrait of a Lady''.
The period from 1882 to 1883 was marked by several losses. His mother died in January 1882, while James was in Washington, DC, on an extended visit to America. He returned to his parents' home in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, where he was together with all four of his siblings for the first time in 15 years. He returned to Europe in mid-1882, but was back in America by the end of the year following the death of his father. Emerson, an old family friend, died in 1882. His brother Wilkie and friend Turgenev both died in 1883.
Middle years, 1884–1897
In 1884, James made another visit to Paris, where he met again with Zola, Daudet, and Goncourt. He had been following the careers of the French "realist" or "naturalist" writers, and was increasingly influenced by them.
In 1886, he published ''
The Bostonians
''The Bostonians'' is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in '' The Century Magazine'' in 1885–1886 and then as a book in 1886. This bittersweet tragicomedy centres on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political c ...
'' and ''
The Princess Casamassima'', both influenced by the French writers he had studied assiduously. Critical reaction and sales were poor. He wrote to Howells that the books had hurt his career rather than helped because they had "reduced the desire, and demand, for my productions to zero.” During this time, he became friends with
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll a ...
,
John Singer Sargent,
Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse (; 21 September 184916 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhoo ...
,
George du Maurier
George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier (6 March 1834 – 8 October 1896) was a Franco-British cartoonist and writer known for work in ''Punch'' and a Gothic novel ''Trilby'', featuring the character Svengali. His son was the actor Sir Gerald ...
,
Paul Bourget
Paul Charles Joseph Bourget (; 2 September 185225 December 1935) was a French poet, novelist and critic. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.
Life
Paul Bourget was born in Amiens in the Somme ''département'' of P ...
, and
Constance Fenimore Woolson
Constance Fenimore Woolson (March 5, 1840 – January 24, 1894) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. She was a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, and is best known for fictions about the Great Lakes region, the Americ ...
. His third novel from the 1880s was ''
The Tragic Muse.'' Although he was following the precepts of Zola in his novels of the '80s, their tone and attitude are closer to the fiction of Alphonse Daudet. The lack of critical and financial success for his novels during this period led him to try writing for the theatre; His dramatic works and his experiences with theatre are discussed below.
In the last quarter of 1889, "for pure and copious lucre," he started translating ''Port Tarascon'', the third volume of Daudet's adventures of
Tartarin de Tarascon. Serialized in ''
Harper's Monthly
''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...
'' from June 1890, this translation – praised as "clever" by ''
The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.
It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...
'' – was published in January 1891 by
Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.
After the stage failure of ''
Guy Domville
''Guy Domville'' is a play by Henry James first staged in London in 1895. The première performance ended with the author being jeered by a section of the audience as he bowed onstage at the end of the play. This failure largely marked the end o ...
'' in 1895, James was near despair and thoughts of death plagued him. His depression was compounded by the deaths of those closest to him, including his sister Alice in 1892; his friend
Wolcott Balestier
Charles Wolcott Balestier (December 13, 1861 – December 6, 1891) was a promising American writer, editor, and publisher who died young, and is now remembered primarily for his connection to Rudyard Kipling. His sister Carrie Balestier married ...
in 1891; and Stevenson and Fenimore Woolson in 1894. The sudden death of Fenimore Woolson in January 1894, and the speculations of suicide surrounding her death, were particularly painful for him.
Leon Edel wrote that the reverberations from Fenimore Woolson's death were such that "we can read a strong element of guilt and bewilderment in his letters, and, even more, in those extraordinary tales of the next half-dozen years, "
The Altar of the Dead" and "
The Beast in the Jungle"."
The years spent on dramatic works were not entirely a loss. As he moved into the last phase of his career, he found ways to adapt dramatic techniques into the novel form. In the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, James made several trips through Europe. He spent a long stay in Italy in 1887. In that year, he published the short novel ''
The Aspern Papers'' and ''
The Reverberator
''The Reverberator'' is a short novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in ''Macmillan's Magazine'' in 1888, and then as a book later the same year. Described by web authorityon Henry James as "a delightful Parisian bonbon," the comedy ...
''.
Late years, 1898–1916
In 1897–1898, he moved to
Rye, Sussex
is a small town and civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex, England, two miles from the sea at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede. An important member of the mediaeval Cinque Ports confederati ...
and wrote ''
The Turn of the Screw
''The Turn of the Screw'' is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in '' Collier's Weekly'' (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898, it was collected in ''The Two Magics'', published by Macmil ...
''; 1899–1900 had the publication of ''
The Awkward Age
''The Awkward Age'' is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in ''Harper's Weekly'' in 1898–1899 and then as a book later in 1899. Originally conceived as a brief, light story about the complications created in her family's socia ...
'' and ''
The Sacred Fount''. During 1902–1904, he wrote ''
The Ambassadors
''The Ambassadors'' is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the ''North American Review'' (NAR). The novel is a dark comedy which follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe to bring the son o ...
'', ''
The Wings of the Dove
''The Wings of the Dove'' is a 1902 novel by Henry James. It tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable ...
'', and ''
The Golden Bowl
''The Golden Bowl'' is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James's career. ''The Golden Bowl'' explores the tangle of int ...
''.
In 1904, he revisited America and lectured on Balzac. In 1906–1910, he published ''
The American Scene
''The American Scene'' is a book of travel writing by Henry James about his trip through the United States in 1904-1905. Ten of the fourteen chapters of the book were published in the ''North American Review'', '' Harper's'' and the '' Fortnigh ...
'' and edited the "
New York Edition
The ''New York Edition'' of Henry James' fiction was a 24-volume collection of the Anglo-American writer's novels, novellas and short stories, originally published in the U.S. and the UK between 1907 and 1909, with a photogravure frontispiec ...
", a 24-volume collection of his works. In 1910, his brother William died; Henry had just joined William from an unsuccessful search for relief in Europe on what then turned out to be his (Henry's) last visit to the United States (from summer 1910 to July 1911) and was near him according to a letter he wrote when he died.
In 1913, he wrote his autobiographies, ''
A Small Boy and Others
''A Small Boy and Others'' is a book of autobiography by Henry James published in 1913. The book covers James' earliest years and discusses his intellectually active family, his intermittent schooling, and his first trips to Europe.
Summary and th ...
'', and ''
Notes of a Son and Brother
''Notes of a Son and Brother'' is an autobiography by Henry James published in 1914. The book covers James' early manhood and tells of "the obscure hurt" that kept him out of the Civil War, his first efforts at writing fiction, and the early death ...
''. After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he did war work. In 1915, he became a British citizen and was awarded the
Order of Merit the following year. He died on 28 February 1916, in
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an affluent area in west London, England, due south-west of Charing Cross by approximately 2.5 miles. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the south-western postal area.
Chelsea histori ...
, and was cremated at
Golders Green Crematorium
Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain. The land for the crematorium was purchased in 1900, costing £6,000 (the equivalent of £135,987 in 2021), ...
. As he requested, his ashes were buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts.
Sexuality
James regularly rejected suggestions that he should marry, and after settling in London, proclaimed himself "a bachelor".
F. W. Dupee, in several volumes on the James family, originated the theory that he had been in love with his cousin, Mary ("Minnie") Temple, but that a neurotic fear of sex kept him from admitting such affections: "James's invalidism ... was itself the symptom of some fear of or scruple against sexual love on his part." Dupee used an episode from James's memoir, ''A Small Boy and Others,'' recounting a dream of a Napoleonic image in the Louvre, to exemplify James's romanticism about Europe, a Napoleonic fantasy into which he fled.
[Dupee (1951)]
Between 1953 and 1972,
Leon Edel
Joseph Leon Edel (9 September 1907 – 5 September 1997) was an American/Canadian literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel.
The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' calls Edel "the foremos ...
wrote a major five-volume biography of James, which used unpublished letters and documents after Edel gained the permission of James's family. Edel's portrayal of James included the suggestion he was celibate, a view first propounded by critic
Saul Rosenzweig Saul Rosenzweig (1907–2004) was an American psychologist and therapist who studied subjects such as repression, psychotherapy, and aggression. Rosenzweig, who, with a co-author, has been credited with being the first to attempt to "elicit repres ...
in 1943. In 1996, Sheldon M. Novick published ''Henry James: The Young Master'', followed by ''Henry James: The Mature Master'' (2007). The first book "caused something of an uproar in Jamesian circles"
as it challenged the previous received notion of celibacy, a once-familiar paradigm in biographies of homosexuals when direct evidence was nonexistent. Novick also criticized Edel for following the discounted Freudian interpretation of homosexuality "as a kind of failure."
The difference of opinion erupted in a series of exchanges between Edel (and later
Fred Kaplan filling in for Edel) and Novick which were published by the online magazine ''
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'', with Novick arguing that even the suggestion of celibacy went against James's own injunction "live!"—not "fantasize!"
A letter James wrote in old age to
Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE (13 March 18841 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among th ...
has been cited as an explicit statement of this. Walpole confessed to him of indulging in "high jinks", and James wrote a reply endorsing it: "We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art, yours & mine, what we are talking about — & the only way to know it is to have lived & loved & cursed & floundered & enjoyed & suffered — I don't think I regret a single ‘excess’ of my responsive youth".
The interpretation of James as living a less austere emotional life has been subsequently explored by other scholars. The often intense politics of Jamesian scholarship has also been the subject of studies. Author
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín (, approximately ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
His first novel, '' The South'', was published in 1990. '' The Blackwater Lightship'' was shortlis ...
has said that
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's ''Epistemology of the Closet'' made a landmark difference to Jamesian scholarship by arguing that he be read as a homosexual writer whose desire to keep his sexuality a secret shaped his layered style and dramatic artistry. According to Tóibín, such a reading "removed James from the realm of
dead white males who wrote about posh people. He became our contemporary."
James's letters to expatriate American sculptor
Hendrik Christian Andersen
Hendrik Christian Andersen (17 April 1872 in Bergen – 19 December 1940 in Rome) was a Norwegian-American sculptor, painter and urban planner.
Background
Andersen was born in Bergen, Norway to parents Anders Andersen from Lærdal and Helene ...
have attracted particular attention. James met the 27-year-old Andersen in Rome in 1899, when James was 56, and wrote letters to Andersen that are intensely emotional: "I hold you, dearest boy, in my innermost love, & count on your feeling me—in every throb of your soul". In a letter of 6 May 1904, to his brother William, James referred to himself as "always your hopelessly celibate even though sexagenarian Henry". How accurate that description might have been is the subject of contention among James's biographers,
[Edel, 306–316 ] but the letters to Andersen were occasionally quasierotic: "I put, my dear boy, my arm around you, & feel the pulsation, thereby, as it were, of our excellent future & your admirable endowment."
His numerous letters to the many young
homosexual men among his close male friends are more forthcoming. To his homosexual friend,
Howard Sturgis
Howard Overing Sturgis (January 30, 1855 – February 7, 1920) was an English-language novelist who wrote about same-sex love. Of American parentage, he lived and worked in Britain.
Early life
"Howdie," as he was known to his intimates, was bo ...
, James could write: "I repeat, almost to indiscretion, that I could live with you. Meanwhile, I can only try to live without you." In another letter to Howard Sturgis, following a long visit, James refers jocularly to their "happy little congress of two". In letters to Hugh Walpole, he pursues convoluted jokes and puns about their relationship, referring to himself as an elephant who "paws you oh so benevolently" and winds about Walpole his "well-meaning old trunk". His letters to
Walter Berry printed by the
Black Sun Press have long been celebrated for their lightly veiled eroticism.
However, James corresponded in equally extravagant language with his many female friends, writing, for example, to fellow novelist
Lucy Clifford
Lucy Clifford (2 August 1846 – 21 April 1929), better known as Mrs. W. K. Clifford, was an English novelist, playwright and journalist.
Biography
Lucy Clifford was born Lucy Lane in London, the daughter of John Lane of Barbados. She married ...
: "Dearest Lucy! What shall I say? when I love you so very, very much, and see you nine times for once that I see Others! Therefore I think that — if you want it made clear to the meanest intelligence — I love you more than I love Others." To his New York friend
Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones: "Dearest Mary Cadwalader. I yearn over you, but I yearn in vain; & your long silence really breaks my heart, mystifies, depresses, almost alarms me, to the point even of making me wonder if poor unconscious & doting old Célimare
ones's pet name for Jameshas 'done' anything, in some dark somnambulism of the spirit, which has ... given you a bad moment, or a wrong impression, or a 'colourable pretext' ... However these things may be, he loves you as tenderly as ever; nothing, to the end of time, will ever detach him from you, & he remembers those Eleventh St. matutinal ''intimes'' hours, those telephonic matinées, as the most romantic of his life ..." His long friendship with American novelist
Constance Fenimore Woolson
Constance Fenimore Woolson (March 5, 1840 – January 24, 1894) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. She was a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, and is best known for fictions about the Great Lakes region, the Americ ...
, in whose house he lived for a number of weeks in Italy in 1887, and his shock and grief over her suicide in 1894, are discussed in detail in Edel's biography and play a central role in a study by
Lyndall Gordon
Lyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941) is a British-based biographical and former academic writer, known for her literary biographies. She is a senior research fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford.
Life
Born in Cape Town, she had her undergradua ...
. Edel conjectured that Woolson was in love with James and killed herself in part because of his coldness, but Woolson's biographers have objected to Edel's account.
Works
Style and themes
James is one of the major figures of
trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from the
Old World
The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by the ...
(Europe), embodying a feudal civilisation that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...
(United States), where people are often brash, open, and
assertive
Assertiveness is the quality of being self-assured and confident without being aggressive to defend a right point of view or a relevant statement. In the field of psychology and psychotherapy, it is a skill that can be learned and a mode of communi ...
, and embody the virtues of the new American society — particularly personal freedom and a more highly evolved moral character. James explores this
clash of personalities A personality clash occurs when two (or more) people find themselves in conflict not over a particular issue or incident, but due to a fundamental incompatibility in their personalities, their approaches to things, or their style of life.
A person ...
and cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power is exercised well or badly.
His protagonists were often young American women facing oppression or abuse, and as his secretary
Theodora Bosanquet remarked in her monograph ''Henry James at Work'':
Philip Guedalla
Philip Guedalla (12 March 1889 – 16 December 1944) was an English barrister, and a popular historical and travel writer and biographer. His wit and epigrams are well-known, one example being "Even reviewers read a Preface". He also was the o ...
jokingly described three phases in the development of James's prose: "James I, James II, and The Old Pretender," and observers do often group his works of fiction into three periods. In his apprentice years, culminating with the masterwork ''The Portrait of a Lady'', his style was simple and direct (by the standards of Victorian magazine writing) and he experimented widely with forms and methods, generally narrating from a conventionally omniscient point of view. Plots generally concern romance, except for the three big novels of social commentary that conclude this period. In the second period, as noted above, he abandoned the serialized novel and from 1890 to about 1897, he wrote short stories and plays. Finally, in his third and last period he returned to the long, serialised novel. Beginning in the second period, but most noticeably in the third, he increasingly abandoned direct statement in favour of frequent double negatives, and complex descriptive imagery. Single paragraphs began to run for page after page, in which an initial noun would be succeeded by pronouns surrounded by clouds of adjectives and prepositional clauses, far from their original referents, and verbs would be deferred and then preceded by a series of adverbs. The overall effect could be a vivid evocation of a scene as perceived by a sensitive observer. It has been debated whether this change of style was engendered by James's shifting from writing to dictating to a typist, a change made during the composition of ''
What Maisie Knew
''What Maisie Knew'' is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in ''The Chap-Book'' and (revised and abridged) in the ''New Review'' in 1897 and then as a book later that year. It tells the story of the sensitive daughter of divorc ...
.''
In its intense focus on the consciousness of his major characters, James's later work foreshadows extensive developments in 20th-century fiction. Indeed, he might have influenced stream-of-consciousness writers such as
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
, who not only read some of his novels but also wrote essays about them. Both contemporary and modern readers have found the late style difficult and unnecessary; his friend
Edith Wharton, who admired him greatly, said that some passages in his work were all but incomprehensible. James was harshly portrayed by
H. G. Wells as a hippopotamus laboriously attempting to pick up a pea that had got into a corner of its cage. The "late James" style was ably parodied by
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the '' Saturd ...
in "The Mote in the Middle Distance".
More important for his work overall may have been his position as an
expatriate
An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person who resides outside their native country. In common usage, the term often refers to educated professionals, skilled workers, or artists taking positions outside their home country, either ...
, and in other ways an outsider, living in Europe. While he came from middle-class and provincial beginnings (seen from the perspective of European polite society), he worked very hard to gain access to all levels of society, and the settings of his fiction range from working-class to
aristocratic
Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'.
At the time of the word' ...
, and often describe the efforts of middle-class Americans to make their way in European capitals. He confessed he got some of his best story ideas from gossip at the dinner table or at country house weekends. He worked for a living, however, and lacked the experiences of select schools, university, and army service, the common bonds of masculine society. He was furthermore a man whose tastes and interests were, according to the prevailing standards of
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
, Anglo-American culture, rather feminine, and who was shadowed by the cloud of prejudice that then and later accompanied suspicions of his homosexuality.
[Leon Edel (1984) volume 4, p. 170] Edmund Wilson compared James's objectivity to Shakespeare's:
Many of James's stories may also be seen as psychological thought experiments about selection. In his preface to the New York edition of ''The American'' he describes the development of the story in his mind as exactly such: the "situation" of an American, "some robust but insidiously beguiled and
betrayed, some cruelly wronged, compatriot..." with the focus of the story being on the response of this wronged man. ''The Portrait of a Lady'' may be an experiment to see what happens when an idealistic young woman suddenly becomes very rich. In many of his tales, characters seem to exemplify alternative futures and possibilities, as most markedly in "
The Jolly Corner", in which the protagonist and a ghost-doppelganger live alternative American and European lives; and in others, like ''The Ambassadors,'' an older James seems fondly to regard his own younger self facing a crucial moment.
Major novels
The first period of James's fiction, usually considered to have culminated in ''
The Portrait of a Lady'', concentrated on the contrast between Europe and America. The style of these novels is generally straightforward and, though personally characteristic, well within the norms of 19th-century fiction. ''
Roderick Hudson
''Roderick Hudson'' is a novel by Henry James. Originally published between January and December 1875 as a serial in '' The Atlantic Monthly'', it is a bildungsroman that traces the development of the title character, a sculptor.
Plot summary
Ro ...
'' (1875) is a
Künstlerroman
A ''Künstlerroman'' (; plural ''-ane''), meaning "artist's novel" in English, is a narrative about an artist's growth to maturity.Werlock, James P. (2010The Facts on File companion to the American short story Volume 2, p.387 It could be classifie ...
that traces the development of the title character, an extremely talented sculptor. Although the book shows some signs of immaturity—this was James's first serious attempt at a full-length novel—it has attracted favourable comment due to the vivid realisation of the three major characters: Roderick Hudson, superbly gifted but unstable and unreliable; Rowland Mallet, Roderick's limited but much more mature friend and patron; and Christina Light, one of James's most enchanting and maddening
femmes fatales
A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...
. The pair of Hudson and Mallet has been seen as representing the two sides of James's own nature: the wildly imaginative artist and the brooding conscientious mentor.
In ''The Portrait of a Lady'' (1881), James concluded the first phase of his career with a novel that remains his most popular piece of long fiction. The story is of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who "affronts her destiny" and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. The narrative is set mainly in Europe, especially in England and Italy. Generally regarded as the masterpiece of his early phase, ''The Portrait of a Lady'' is described as a
psychological novel
In literature, psychological fiction (also psychological realism) is a narrative genre that emphasizes interior characterization and motivation to explore the spiritual, emotional, and mental lives of the characters. The mode of narration examin ...
, exploring the minds of his characters, and almost a work of social science, exploring the differences between Europeans and Americans, the old and the new worlds.
The second period of James's career, which extends from the publication of ''
The Portrait of a Lady'' through the end of the 19th century, features less popular novels, including ''
The Princess Casamassima'', published serially in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1885–1886, and ''The Bostonians'', published serially in ''
The Century'' during the same period. This period also featured James's celebrated Gothic novella, ''The Turn of the Screw'' (1898).
The third period of James's career reached its most significant achievement in three novels published just around the start of the 20th century: ''
The Wings of the Dove
''The Wings of the Dove'' is a 1902 novel by Henry James. It tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable ...
'' (1902), ''
The Ambassadors
''The Ambassadors'' is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the ''North American Review'' (NAR). The novel is a dark comedy which follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe to bring the son o ...
'' (1903), and ''
The Golden Bowl
''The Golden Bowl'' is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James's career. ''The Golden Bowl'' explores the tangle of int ...
'' (1904). Critic
F. O. Matthiessen
Francis Otto Matthiessen (February 19, 1902 – April 1, 1950) was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies. His best known work, ''American Renaissance: Art and Expression in ...
called this "trilogy" James's major phase, and these novels have certainly received intense critical study. The second-written of the books, ''The Wings of the Dove'', was the first published because it was not serialized. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American
heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her impact on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable motives, while others are more self-interested. James stated in his autobiographical books that Milly was based on Minny Temple, his beloved cousin, who died at an early age of tuberculosis. He said that he attempted in the novel to wrap her memory in the "beauty and dignity of art".
Shorter narratives
![Lamb House, Rye](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Lamb_House%2C_Rye.jpg)
James was particularly interested in what he called the "beautiful and blest ''nouvelle''", or the longer form of short narrative. Still, he produced a number of very short stories in which he achieved notable compression of sometimes complex subjects. The following narratives are representative of James's achievement in the shorter forms of fiction.
* "
A Tragedy of Error" (1864), short story
* "
The Story of a Year" (1865), short story
* ''
A Passionate Pilgrim'' (1871), novella
* ''
Madame de Mauves'' (1874), novella
* ''
Daisy Miller
''Daisy Miller'' is a novella by Henry James that first appeared in '' The Cornhill Magazine'' in June–July 1878, and in book form the following year. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a s ...
'' (1878), novella
* ''
The Aspern Papers'' (1888), novella
* ''
The Lesson of the Master'' (1888), novella
* ''
The Pupil'' (1891), short story
* "
The Figure in the Carpet" (1896), short story
* ''
The Beast in the Jungle'' (1903), novella
* ''An International Episode (1878)''
* ''Picture and Text''
* ''Four Meetings'' (1885)
* ''A London Life, and Other Tales'' (1889)
* ''
The Spoils of Poynton
''The Spoils of Poynton'' is a novel by Henry James, first published under the title ''The Old Things'' as a serial in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1896 and then as a book in 1897. This novel traces the shifting relations among three people and ...
'' (1896)
* ''Embarrassments'' (1896)
* ''The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw, Covering End'' (1898)
* ''
In the Cage
''In the Cage'' is a novella by Henry James, first published as a book in 1898. This long story centers on an unnamed London telegraphist. She deciphers clues to her clients' personal lives from the often cryptic telegrams they submit to her ...
'' (1898), novella
* ''A Little Tour of France'' (1900)
* ''The Sacred Fount'' (1901)
* ''
The Birthplace'' (1903)
* ''Views and Reviews'' (1908)
* ''The Finer Grain'' (1910)
* ''The Outcry'' (1911)
* ''Lady Barbarina: The Siege of London, An International Episode and Other Tales'' (1922)
Plays
At several points in his career, James wrote plays, beginning with one-act plays written for periodicals in 1869 and 1871 and a dramatisation of his popular novella ''Daisy Miller'' in 1882. From 1890 to 1892, having received a bequest that freed him from magazine publication, he made a strenuous effort to succeed on the London stage, writing a half-dozen plays, of which only one, a dramatisation of his novel ''The American'', was produced. This play was performed for several years by a touring repertory company, and had a respectable run in London, but did not earn very much money for James. His other plays written at this time were not produced.
In 1893, however, he responded to a request from actor-manager George Alexander for a serious play for the opening of his renovated St. James's Theatre, and wrote a long drama, ''Guy Domville'', which Alexander produced. A noisy uproar arose on the opening night, 5 January 1895, with hissing from the gallery when James took his bow after the final curtain, and the author was upset. The play received moderately good reviews and had a modest run of four weeks before being taken off to make way for
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
's ''
The Importance of Being Earnest
''The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious ...
'', which Alexander thought would have better prospects for the coming season.
After the stresses and disappointment of these efforts, James insisted that he would write no more for the theatre, but within weeks had agreed to write a
curtain-raiser
A curtain raiser is a short performance, stage act, show, actor or performer that opens a show for the main attraction. The term is derived from the act of raising the stage curtain. The first person on stage has "raised the curtain".
The fashio ...
for
Ellen Terry
Dame Alice Ellen Terry, (27 February 184721 July 1928), was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and tour ...
. This became the one-act "Summersoft", which he later rewrote into a short story, "Covering End", and then expanded into a full-length play, ''The High Bid'', which had a brief run in London in 1907, when James made another concerted effort to write for the stage. He wrote three new plays, two of which were in production when the death of
Edward VII on 6 May 1910 plunged London into mourning and theatres closed. Discouraged by failing health and the stresses of theatrical work, James did not renew his efforts in the theatre, but recycled his plays as successful novels. ''
The Outcry
''The Outcry'' is a novel by Henry James published in 1911. It was originally conceived as a play. James cast the material in a three-act drama in 1909, but like many of his plays, it failed to be produced. (There were two posthumous performances ...
'' was a best-seller in the United States when it was published in 1911. During 1890–1893, when he was most engaged with the theatre, James wrote a good deal of theatrical criticism, and assisted Elizabeth Robins and others in translating and producing Henrik Ibsen for the first time in London.
Leon Edel argued in his psychoanalytic biography that James was traumatised by the opening-night uproar that greeted ''Guy Domville'', and that it plunged him into a prolonged depression. The successful later novels, in Edel's view, were the result of a kind of self-analysis, expressed in fiction, which partly freed him from his fears. Other biographers and scholars have not accepted this account, with the more common view being that of F.O. Matthiessen, who wrote: "Instead of being crushed by the collapse of his hopes
or the theatre.. he felt a resurgence of new energy."
Nonfiction
Beyond his fiction, James was one of the more important literary critics in the history of the novel. In his classic essay ''
The Art of Fiction'' (1884), he argued against rigid prescriptions on the novelist's choice of subject and method of treatment. He maintained that the widest possible freedom in content and approach would help ensure narrative fiction's continued vitality. James wrote many critical articles on other novelists; typical is his book-length
study of Nathaniel Hawthorne, which has been the subject of critical debate. Richard Brodhead has suggested that the study was emblematic of James's struggle with Hawthorne's influence, and constituted an effort to place the elder writer "at a disadvantage." Gordon Fraser, meanwhile, has suggested that the study was part of a more commercial effort by James to introduce himself to British readers as Hawthorne's natural successor.
When James assembled the ''
New York Edition
The ''New York Edition'' of Henry James' fiction was a 24-volume collection of the Anglo-American writer's novels, novellas and short stories, originally published in the U.S. and the UK between 1907 and 1909, with a photogravure frontispiec ...
'' of his fiction in his final years, he wrote a series of prefaces that subjected his own work to searching, occasionally harsh criticism.
![HenryJames1897](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/HenryJames1897.jpg)
At 22, James wrote ''The Noble School of Fiction'' for ''The Nation''s first issue in 1865. He wrote, in all, over 200 essays and book, art, and theatre reviews for the magazine.
For most of his life, James harboured ambitions for success as a playwright. He converted his novel ''The American'' into a play that enjoyed modest returns in the early 1890s. In all, he wrote about a dozen plays, most of which went unproduced. His costume drama ''Guy Domville'' failed disastrously on its opening night in 1895. James then largely abandoned his efforts to conquer the stage and returned to his fiction. In his ''
Notebooks
A notebook is a small book often used for writing.
Notebook or The Notebook may also refer to:
Computing
*Laptop, a type of personal computer
*Google Notebook, a discontinued online application
* Notebook interface, a type of programming environ ...
'', he maintained that his theatrical experiment benefited his novels and tales by helping him dramatise his characters' thoughts and emotions. James produced a small amount of theatrical criticism, including appreciations of Henrik Ibsen.
With his wide-ranging artistic interests, James occasionally wrote on the visual arts. He wrote a favourable assessment of fellow expatriate
John Singer Sargent, a painter whose critical status has improved markedly since the mid twentieth century. James also wrote sometimes charming, sometimes brooding articles about various places where he visited and lived. His books of travel writing include ''
Italian Hours
''Italian Hours'' is a book of travel writing by Henry James published in 1909. The book collected essays that James had written over nearly forty years about a country he knew and loved well. James extensively revised and sometimes expanded the ...
'' (an example of the charming approach) and ''
The American Scene
''The American Scene'' is a book of travel writing by Henry James about his trip through the United States in 1904-1905. Ten of the fourteen chapters of the book were published in the ''North American Review'', '' Harper's'' and the '' Fortnigh ...
'' (on the brooding side).
James was one of the great letter-writers of any era. More than 10,000 of his personal letters are extant, and over 3,000 have been published in a large number of collections. A complete edition of James's letters began publication in 2006, edited by Pierre Walker and Greg Zacharias. , eight volumes have been published, covering from 1855 to 1880. James's correspondents included contemporaries such as
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll a ...
,
Edith Wharton, and
Joseph Conrad, along with many others in his wide circle of friends and acquaintances. The content of the letters range from trivialities to serious discussions of artistic, social, and personal issues.
Very late in life, James began a series of autobiographical works: ''A Small Boy and Others'', ''Notes of a Son and Brother'', and the unfinished ''
The Middle Years''. These books portray the development of a classic observer who was passionately interested in artistic creation but was somewhat reticent about participating fully in the life around him.
Reception
Criticism, biographies and fictional treatments
![LambHouseInterior](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/LambHouseInterior.jpg)
James's work has remained steadily popular with the limited audience of educated readers to whom he spoke during his lifetime, and has remained firmly in the canon, but after his death, some American critics, such as
Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks (February 16, 1886 in Plainfield, New Jersey – May 2, 1963 in Bridgewater, Connecticut) was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.
Biography
Brooks graduated from Harvard University in 1908. As a student ...
, expressed hostility towards James for his long expatriation and eventual naturalisation as a British subject. Other critics such as
E. M. Forster complained about what they saw as James's squeamishness in the treatment of sex and other possibly controversial material, or dismissed his late style as difficult and obscure, relying heavily on extremely long sentences and excessively
latinate
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
language. 'Even in his lifetime,' explains scholar Hazel Hutchinson, 'James had a reputation as a difficult writer for clever readers.'
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
criticised him for writing "fiction as if it were a painful duty".
Vernon Parrington, composing a canon of American literature, condemned James for having cut himself off from America.
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...
wrote about him, "Despite the scruples and delicate complexities of James, his work suffers from a major defect: the absence of life." And
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
, writing to
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...
, asked, "Please tell me what you find in Henry James. ... we have his works here, and I read, and I can't find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar and pale as
Walter Lamb. Is there really any sense in it?" Novelist W. Somerset Maugham wrote, "He did not know the English as an Englishman instinctively knows them and so his English characters never to my mind quite ring true," and argued, "The great novelists, even in seclusion, have lived life passionately. Henry James was content to observe it from a window." Maugham nevertheless wrote, "The fact remains that those last novels of his, notwithstanding their unreality, make all other novels, except the very best, unreadable."
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín (, approximately ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
His first novel, '' The South'', was published in 1990. '' The Blackwater Lightship'' was shortlis ...
observed that James "never really wrote about the English very well. His English characters don't work for me."
Despite these criticisms, James is now valued for his psychological and moral realism, his masterful creation of character, his low-key but playful humour, and his assured command of the language. In his 1983 book, ''The Novels of Henry James'',
Edward Wagenknecht
Edward (Charles) Wagenknecht (March 28, 1900 – May 24, 2004) was an American literary critic and teacher who specialized in 19th century American literature. He wrote and edited many books on literature and movies, and taught for many years at ...
offers an assessment that echoes Theodora Bosanquet's:
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells (; March 1, 1837 – May 11, 1920) was an American realist novelist, literary critic, and playwright, nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters". He was particularly known for his tenure as editor of ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ...
saw James as a representative of a new realist school of literary art, which broke with the English romantic tradition epitomised by the works of Charles Dickens and William Thackeray. Howells wrote that realism found "its chief exemplar in Mr. James ... A novelist he is not, after the old fashion, or after any fashion but his own."
F. R. Leavis
Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis (14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York.
Leavis ra ...
championed Henry James as a novelist of "established pre-eminence" in ''
The Great Tradition
''The Great Tradition'' is a book of literary criticism written by F R Leavis, published in 1948 by Chatto & Windus.
Highlights of the book
In his work, Leavis names Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad as the great English ...
'' (1948), asserting that ''The Portrait of a Lady'' and ''The Bostonians'' were "the two most brilliant novels in the language." James is now prized as a master of point of view who moved literary fiction forward by insisting in showing, not telling, his stories to the reader.
Portrayals in fiction
Henry James has been the subject of a number of novels and stories, including:
* ''
Boon
Boon may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Boon (game), a trick-taking card game
* ''Boon'' (novel), a 1915 satirical work by H. G. Wells
* ''Boon'' (TV series), a British television series starring Michael Elphick
* The Ultimate Boo ...
'' by
H.G. Wells
* ''Author, Author'' by
David Lodge
* ''Youth'' by
J.M. Coetzee
* ''
The Master'' by
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín (, approximately ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
His first novel, '' The South'', was published in 1990. '' The Blackwater Lightship'' was shortlis ...
* ''Hotel de Dream'' by
Edmund White
Edmund Valentine White III (born 1940) is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him (and later ) de l'Ordr ...
* ''Lions at Lamb House'' by
Edwin M. Yoder
* ''Felony'' by
Emma Tennant
Emma Christina Tennant FRSL (20 October 1937 – 21 January 2017) was an English novelist and editor of Scottish extraction, known for a post-modern approach to her fiction, often imbued with fantasy or magic. Several of her novels give a femi ...
* ''
Dictation
Dictation can refer to:
*Dictation (exercise), when one person speaks while another person transcribes
*'' Dictation: A Quartet'', a collection of short stories by Cynthia Ozick, published in 2008
* Digital dictation, the use of digital electronic ...
'' by
Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.
Biography
Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children. She moved to the Bronx with her Belarusian-Jewish parents from Hlusk, ...
* ''The James Boys'' by Richard Liebmann-Smith
* ''The Open Door'', by Elizabeth Maguire
* ''The Great Divide'' by Rex Hunter
* ''
The Master at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1914–1916'', by
Joyce Carol Oates
* ''The Typewriter's Tale'', by Michael Heyns
* ''Henry James' Midnight Song'', by Carol de Chellis Hill
* ''The Fifth Heart'', by
Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons (born April 4, 1948) is an American science fiction and horror writer. He is the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles, among other works which span the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, sometimes wi ...
* ''
Earthly Powers'' by
Anthony Burgess
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer.
Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire ''A Clockwork ...
* ''
Empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
'', by
Gore Vidal
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and ...
* ''The Maze at Windermere'', by
Gregory Blake Smith
* ''Ringrose The Pirate'', by
Don Nigro
Don Nigro is an American playwright; his plays ''Anima Mundi'' and ''The Dark Sonnets of the Lady'' have both been nominated for the National Repertory Theatre Foundation's National Play Award. He has won a Playwright's Fellowship Grant from the ...
David Lodge also wrote a long essay about writing about Henry James in his collection ''The Year of Henry James: The Story of a Novel''.
Adaptations
Henry James stories and novels have been adapted to film, television, and music video over 150 times (some TV shows did upwards of a dozen stories) from 1933 to 2018.
The majority of these are in English, but with adaptations in French (13), Spanish (7), Italian (6), German (5), Portuguese (1), Yugoslavian (1), and Swedish (1).
Those most frequently adapted include:
* ''
The Turn of the Screw
''The Turn of the Screw'' is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in '' Collier's Weekly'' (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898, it was collected in ''The Two Magics'', published by Macmil ...
'' (28 times)
* ''
The Aspern Papers'' (17 times)
* ''
Washington Square'' (8 times), as ''The Heiress'' (6 times), as ''Victoria'' (once)
* ''
The Wings of the Dove
''The Wings of the Dove'' is a 1902 novel by Henry James. It tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable ...
'' (9 times)
* ''
The Bostonians
''The Bostonians'' is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in '' The Century Magazine'' in 1885–1886 and then as a book in 1886. This bittersweet tragicomedy centres on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political c ...
'' (4 times)
* ''
Daisy Miller
''Daisy Miller'' is a novella by Henry James that first appeared in '' The Cornhill Magazine'' in June–July 1878, and in book form the following year. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a s ...
'' (4 times)
* ''
The Sense of the Past
''The Sense of the Past'' is an unfinished novel by the American author Henry James that was published in 1917, a year after James' death. The novel is at once an eerie account of time travel and a bittersweet comedy of manners. A young American ...
'' (4 times)
* ''
The Ambassadors
''The Ambassadors'' is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the ''North American Review'' (NAR). The novel is a dark comedy which follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe to bring the son o ...
'' (3 times)
* ''
The Portrait of a Lady'' (3 times)
* ''
The American'' (3 times)
* ''
What Maisie Knew
''What Maisie Knew'' is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in ''The Chap-Book'' and (revised and abridged) in the ''New Review'' in 1897 and then as a book later that year. It tells the story of the sensitive daughter of divorc ...
'' (3 times)
* ''
The Golden Bowl
''The Golden Bowl'' is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James's career. ''The Golden Bowl'' explores the tangle of int ...
'' (2 times)
* ''The Ghostly Rental'' (once)
Notes
References
Sources
*
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...
(2009)
001 Henry James'.
Infobase Publishing, originally published by Chelsea House. .
*
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...
and Esther Zemborain de Torres (1971). ''An Introduction to American Literature.'' Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
* Theodora Bosanquet (1982). ''Henry James At Work''. Haskell House Publishers Inc. pp. 275–276.
* John R. Bradley, ed. (1999). ''Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire.'' Palgrave Macmillan.
* John R. Bradley (2000). I ''Henry James on Stage and Screen'' Palgrave Macmillan.
* John R. Bradley (2000). ''Henry James's Permanent Adolescence.'' Palgrave Macmillan.
*
Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks (February 16, 1886 in Plainfield, New Jersey – May 2, 1963 in Bridgewater, Connecticut) was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.
Biography
Brooks graduated from Harvard University in 1908. As a student ...
(1925). ''The Pilgrimage of Henry James''
* Gabriel Brownstein (2004). "Introduction," in James, Henry. ''Portrait of a Lady'', Barnes & Noble Classics series, Spark Educational Publishing.
* Lewis Dabney, ed. (1983). ''The Portable
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publi ...
''.
* Marysa Demoor and Monty Chisholm, editors (1999). ''Bravest of Women and Finest of Friends: Henry James's Letters to Lucy Clifford'', University of Victoria (1999), p. 79
*
F.W. Dupee (1951). ''Henry James'' William Sloane Associates, The American Men of Letters Series.
*
Leon Edel
Joseph Leon Edel (9 September 1907 – 5 September 1997) was an American/Canadian literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel.
The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' calls Edel "the foremos ...
, ed. (1955). ''The Selected Letters of Henry James'' New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Vol. 1
* Leon Edel, ed. (1983). ''Henry James Letters''.
* Leon Edel, ed. (1990). ''The Complete Plays of Henry James.'' New York: Oxford University Press.
*
E.M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly '' A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stor ...
(1956). ''Aspects of the Novel''
*
*
*
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel (; born October 7, 1959) is an American editor and publisher. She is the publisher, part-owner, and former editor of the progressive magazine ''The Nation''. She was the magazine's editor from 1995 to 2019, when she was s ...
(1990). ''The Nation 1865–1990'',
Thunder's Mouth Press
Perseus Books Group was an American publishing company founded in 1996 by investor Frank Pearl. Perseus acquired the trade publishing division of Addison-Wesley (including the Merloyd Lawrence imprint) in 1997. It was named Publisher of the Y ...
.
* James Kraft (1969). ''The early tales of Henry James''. Southern Illinois University Press.
* Paul Lauter (2010)
''A companion to American literature and culture'' Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 364.
*
Percy Lubbock
Percy Lubbock, CBE (4 June 1879 – 1 August 1965) was an English man of letters, known as an essayist, critic and biographer. His controversial book ''The Craft of Fiction'' gained influence in the 1920s.
Life
Percy Lubbock was the son of the ...
, ed. (1920). ''The Letters of Henry James,'' vol. 1. New York: Scribner.
*
F. O. Matthiessen
Francis Otto Matthiessen (February 19, 1902 – April 1, 1950) was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies. His best known work, ''American Renaissance: Art and Expression in ...
and Kenneth Murdock, editors (1981) ''The Notebooks of Henry James.'' University of Chicago Press.
*
* Sheldon M. Novick (2007).
Henry James: The Mature Master'. Random House. .
* Ross Posnock (1987). "James, Browning, and the Theatrical Self," in Neuman, Mark and Payne, Michael. ''Self, sign, and symbol''. Bucknell University Press.
*
* and Elizabeth Berkeley, editors (1994). ''The Correspondence of William James: Volume 3, William and Henry. 1897–1910.'' Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
*
Allan Wade
Allan Wade (17 May 1881 – 12 July 1955) was a British actor, theatre director and writer.
Early life
Allan Wade was the son of the Rev Stephen Wade of Boscastle in Cornwall and was educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, Tiverton. In ...
, ed. (1948). ''Henry James: The Scenic Art, Notes on Acting and the Drama 1872–1901''.
*
Edward Wagenknecht
Edward (Charles) Wagenknecht (March 28, 1900 – May 24, 2004) was an American literary critic and teacher who specialized in 19th century American literature. He wrote and edited many books on literature and movies, and taught for many years at ...
(1983). ''The Novels of Henry James''.
*
Edith Wharton (1925) ''The Writing of Fiction''.
*
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
(2003).
A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf'. Harcourt. p. 33, 39–40, 58, 86, 215, 301, 351. .
*
H.G. Wells, Boon. (1915) ''The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump.'' London: T. Fisher Unwin p. 101.
* Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, ed. (2004). ''Beloved Boy: Letters to Hendrik C. Andersen, 1899–1915.'' University of Virginia Press.
Further reading
General
* ''A Bibliography of Henry James: Third Edition'' by Leon Edel, Dan Laurence and James Rambeau (1982).
* ''A Henry James Encyclopedia'' by Robert L. Gale (1989).
* ''A Henry James Chronology'' by Edgar F. Harden (2005).
* ''The Daily Henry James: A Year of Quotes from the Work of the Master''. Edited by Michael Gorra (2016).
* ''Henry James A Bibliographical Catalogue of Editions to 1921,2nd Edition Revised, By David J. Supino, Liverpool U. Press 2014
Autobiography
* ''A Small Boy and Others: A Critical Edition'' edited by Peter Collister (2011).
* Notes of a Son and Brother ''and'' The Middle Years'': A Critical Edition'' edited by Peter Collister (2011)
* ''Autobiographies'' edited by Philip Horne (2016). Contains ''A Small Boy and Others,'' ''Notes of a Son and Brother,'' ''The Middle Years,'' other autobiographical writings, and ''Henry James at Work, by Theodora Bosanquet.''
Bibliography
* ''An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Henry James'' by
Nicola Bradbury Nicola Anne Lulham Bradbury D. Phil. (born 1951) is an English literary critic, lecturer, editor, and author, specializing in the 19th century novel.
Life
Bradbury was born in Weston-super-Mare, the daughter of Robin J. Bradbury and Joan Lulham, w ...
(Harvester Press, 1987).
Biography
* ''Henry James: The Untried Years 1843–1870'' by
Leon Edel
Joseph Leon Edel (9 September 1907 – 5 September 1997) was an American/Canadian literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel.
The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' calls Edel "the foremos ...
(1953)
* ''Henry James: The Conquest of London 1870–1881'' by Leon Edel (1962)
* ''Henry James: The Middle Years 1882–1895'' by Leon Edel (1962)
* ''Henry James: The Treacherous Years 1895–1901'' by Leon Edel (1969)
* ''Henry James: The Master 1901–1916'' by Leon Edel (1972)
* ''Henry James: A Life'' by Leon Edel (1985) . One-volume abridgment of Edel's five-volume biography, listed above.
* ''Henry James: The Young Master'' by Sheldon M. Novick (1996)
* ''Henry James: The Mature Master'' by Sheldon M. Novick (2007)
* ''Henry James: The Imagination of Genius'' by
Fred Kaplan (1992)
* ''A Private Life of Henry James: Two Women and His Art'' by
Lyndall Gordon
Lyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941) is a British-based biographical and former academic writer, known for her literary biographies. She is a senior research fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford.
Life
Born in Cape Town, she had her undergradua ...
(1998) . Revised edition titled ''Henry James: His Women and His Art'' (2012) .
* ''The Three Jameses: A Family of Minds: Henry James. Sr., William James, Henry James'' by Clinton Hartley Grattan (1932)
* ''The James Family: A Group Biography'' by
F. O. Matthiessen
Francis Otto Matthiessen (February 19, 1902 – April 1, 1950) was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies. His best known work, ''American Renaissance: Art and Expression in ...
(1947) (0394742435)
* ''The Jameses: A Family Narrative'' by
R. W. B. Lewis (1991)
* ''House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family'' by Paul Fisher (2008)
Letters
* ''Theatre and Friendship'' by Elizabeth Robins. London: Jonathan Cape, 1932.
* ''Henry James: Letters'' edited by Leon Edel (four vols. 1974–1984)
* ''Henry James: A Life in Letters'' edited by Philip Horne (1999)
* ''The Complete Letters of Henry James,1855–1872'' edited by Pierre A. Walker and Greg Zacharias (two vols., University of Nebraska Press, 2006)
* ''The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1872–1876'' edited by Pierre A. Walker and Greg W. Zacharias (three vols., University of Nebraska Press, 2008)
Editions
* ''Complete Stories 1864–1874'' (
Jean Strouse, ed, Library of America, 1999)
* ''Complete Stories 1874–1884'' (William Vance, ed, Library of America, 1999)
* ''Complete Stories 1884–1891'' (
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''Whit ...
, ed, Library of America, 1999)
* ''Complete Stories 1892–1898'' (
John Hollander
John Hollander (October 28, 1929 – August 17, 2013) was an American poet and literary critic. At the time of his death, he was Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University, having previously taught at Connecticut College, Hunter ...
, David Bromwich,
Denis Donoghue, eds, Library of America, 1996)
* ''Complete Stories 1898–1910'' (John Hollander, David Bromwich, Denis Donoghue, eds, Library of America, 1996)
* '' Novels 1871–1880: Watch and Ward, Roderick Hudson, The American, The Europeans, Confidence'' (William T. Stafford, ed.,
Library of America
The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors rang ...
, 1983)
* ''Novels 1881–1886: Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians'' (William T. Stafford, ed, Library of America, 1985)
* ''Novels 1886–1890: The Princess Casamassima, The Reverberator, The Tragic Muse'' (Daniel Mark Fogel, ed, Library of America, 1989)
* ''Novels 1896–1899: The Other House, The Spoils of Poynton, What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age'' (Myra Jehlen, ed, Library of America, 2003)
* ''Novels 1901–1902: The Sacred Fount, The Wings of the Dove'' (
Leo Bersani, ed, Library of America, 2006)
* ''Collected Travel Writings, Great Britain and America: English Hours; The American Scene; Other Travels'' edited by Richard Howard (Library of America, 1993)
* ''Collected Travel Writings, The Continent: A Little Tour in France, Italian Hours, Other Travels'' edited by Richard Howard (Library of America, 1993)
* ''Literary Criticism Volume One: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers'' edited by Leon Edel and Mark Wilson (Library of America, 1984)
* ''Literary Criticism Volume Two: French Writers, Other European Writers, The Prefaces to the New York Edition'' edited by Leon Edel and Mark Wilson (Library of America, 1984)
* ''The Complete Notebooks of Henry James'' edited by Leon Edel and Lyall Powers (1987)
* ''The Complete Plays of Henry James'' edited by Leon Edel (1991)
* ''Henry James: Autobiography'' edited by F.W. Dupee (1956)
* ''The American: an Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism'' edited by James Tuttleton (1978)
* ''The Ambassadors: An Authoritative Text, The Author on the Novel, Criticism'' edited by S.P. Rosenbaum (1994)
* ''The Turn of the Screw: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism'' edited by Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren (1999)
* ''The Portrait of a Lady: An Authoritative Text, Henry James and the Novel, Reviews and Criticism'' edited by Robert Bamberg (2003)
* ''The Wings of the Dove: Authoritative Text, The Author and the Novel, Criticism'' edited by J. Donald Crowley and Richard Hocks (2003)
* ''Tales of Henry James: The Texts of the Tales, the Author on His Craft, Criticism'' edited by Christof Wegelin and Henry Wonham (2003)
* ''The Portable Henry James,'' New Edition edited by John Auchard (2004)
* ''Henry James on Culture: Collected Essays on Politics and the American Social Scene'' edited by Pierre Walker (1999)
Criticism
* ''The Novels of Henry James'' by
Oscar Cargill (1961)
* ''Henry James: the later novels'' by
Nicola Bradbury Nicola Anne Lulham Bradbury D. Phil. (born 1951) is an English literary critic, lecturer, editor, and author, specializing in the 19th century novel.
Life
Bradbury was born in Weston-super-Mare, the daughter of Robin J. Bradbury and Joan Lulham, w ...
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979)
* ''The Tales of Henry James'' by Edward Wagenknecht (1984)
* ''Modern Critical Views: Henry James'' edited by
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...
(1987)
* ''A Companion to Henry James Studies'' edited by Daniel Mark Fogel (1993)
* ''Henry James's Europe: Heritage and Transfer'' edited by Dennis Tredy, Annick Duperray and Adrian Harding (2011)
* ''Echec et écriture. Essai sur les nouvelles de Henry James'' by Annick Duperray (1992)
* ''Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays'' edited by
Ruth Yeazell (1994)
* ''The Cambridge Companion to Henry James'' edited by Jonathan Freedman (1998)
* ''The Novel Art: Elevations of American Fiction after Henry James'' by
Mark McGurl (2001)
* ''Henry James and the Visual'' by Kendall Johnson (2007)
* ''False Positions: The Representational Logics of Henry James's Fiction''. by
Julie Rivkin. (1996)
* 'Henry James's Critique of the Beautiful Life,' by R.R. Reno in
Azure, Spring 2010
* ''Approaches to Teaching Henry James's Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw'' edited by Kimberly C. Reed and Peter G. Beidler (2005)
* ''Henry James and Modern Moral Life'' by
Robert B. Pippin (1999)
* ''"Friction with the Market": Henry James and the Profession of Authorship'' by Michael Anesko (1986)
External links
Henry James Collectionat the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts. Es ...
Henry James Collectionat the
Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...
Henry James Lettersat
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
The Henry James Scholar's Guide to Web Sites
The Ladder—a Henry James Web Site(archived)
*
Electronic editions
*
*
*
*
*
*
From th
Rare Book and Special Collections Divisionat the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:James, Henry
1843 births
1916 deaths
19th-century American novelists
20th-century American novelists
20th-century English novelists
American male novelists
American people of Irish descent
American people of Scottish descent
American psychological fiction writers
Ghost story writers
Members of the Order of Merit
Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
People from Greenwich Village
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
Victorian novelists
Writers of Gothic fiction
Weird fiction writers
People from Rye, East Sussex
20th-century American male writers
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters