Henry James
Overview
Henry James, OM
(15 April 1843 – ) was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism
. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James
and diarist Alice James
.
James alternated between America and Europe for the first 20 years of his life, after which he settled in England, becoming a British subject
in 1915, one year before his death.
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
(15 April 1843 – ) was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
and diarist Alice James
Alice James
Alice James was a U.S. diarist. The only daughter of Henry James, Sr. and sister of philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, she is known mainly for the posthumously published diary that she kept in her final years.-Life:Born into a wealthy and intellectually active family, Alice James...
.
James alternated between America and Europe for the first 20 years of his life, after which he settled in England, becoming a British subject
British subject
In British nationality law, the term British subject has at different times had different meanings. The current definition of the term British subject is contained in the British Nationality Act 1981.- Prior to 1949 :...
in 1915, one year before his death.
Quotations
Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.
Letter to Henry James Sr.|Henry James Sr. (26 October 1869)
The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination... To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.
Letter to Charles Eliot Norton|Charles Eliot Norton (1871-01-16)
It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.
Letter to Charles Eliot Norton (1872-02-04)
One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.
Hawthorne, ch. II: Early Manhood
Whatever question there may be of his [Thoreau's] talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial — he was parochial; it is only at his best that he is readable.
Hawthorne, ch. IV: Brook Farm and Concord
He would agree that life is a little worth living — or worth living a little; but would remark that, unfortunately, to live little enough, we have to live a great deal.
Hawthorne, ch. V: The Three American Novels
It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.
Hawthorne, ch. VI: England and Italy
Encyclopedia
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
(15 April 1843 – ) was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
and diarist Alice James
Alice James
Alice James was a U.S. diarist. The only daughter of Henry James, Sr. and sister of philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, she is known mainly for the posthumously published diary that she kept in her final years.-Life:Born into a wealthy and intellectually active family, Alice James...
.
James alternated between America and Europe for the first 20 years of his life, after which he settled in England, becoming a British subject
British subject
In British nationality law, the term British subject has at different times had different meanings. The current definition of the term British subject is contained in the British Nationality Act 1981.- Prior to 1949 :...
in 1915, one year before his death. He is primarily known for the series of novels in which he portrays the encounter of Americans with Europe and Europeans. His method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allows him to explore issues related to consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
and perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
.
James contributed significantly to literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world. James claimed that a text must first and foremost be realistic and contain a representation of life that is recognisable to its readers. Good novels, to James, show life in action and are, most importantly, interesting. The concept of a good or bad novel is judged solely upon whether the author is good or bad. His imaginative use of point of view
Point of view (literature)
The narrative mode is the set of methods the author of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical story uses to convey the plot to the audience. Narration, the process of presenting the narrative, occurs because of the narrative mode...
, interior monologue and possibly unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
s in his own novels and tales brought a new depth and interest to narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
fiction. An extraordinarily productive writer, in addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books of travel
Travel writing
Travel writing is a genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. The genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from the humorous to the serious....
, biography, autobiography, and criticism
Criticism
Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...
, and wrote plays, some of which were performed during his lifetime with moderate success. His theatrical work is thought to have profoundly influenced his later novels and tales.
Life
James was born in New York City into a wealthy family. His father, Henry James Sr., was one of the best-known intellectuals in mid-19th-century America. In his youth James travelled back and forth between Europe and America. He studied with tutors in Geneva, London, Paris, Bologna, and Bonn. At the age of 19 he briefly attended Harvard Law SchoolHarvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
, but preferred reading literature to studying law. James published his first short story, A Tragedy of Error
A Tragedy of Error
A Tragedy of Error is the title of a short story by American writer Henry James, his first, written at the age of 21 and published anonymously in the February 1864 issue of Continental Monthly...
, at age 21, and devoted himself to literature. In 1866–69 and 1871–72 he was a contributor to The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
and Atlantic Monthly.
From an early age James read the classics of English, American, French and German literature, and Russian classics in translation. His first novel, Watch and Ward
Watch and Ward
For another meaning of Watch and Ward see:WatchmanWatch 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 attempt at a novel, though he virtually disowned the book later in life...
(1871), was written while travelling through Venice and Paris. After living in Paris, where he was contributor to the New York Tribune
New York Tribune
The New York Tribune was an American newspaper, first established by Horace Greeley in 1841, which was long considered one of the leading newspapers in the United States...
, James moved to England in 1876, living first in London and then in Rye, Sussex. During his first years in Europe James wrote novels that portrayed Americans living abroad. In 1905 James visited America for the first time in twenty-five years, and wrote "Jolly Corner".
Among James's masterpieces are Daisy Miller
Daisy Miller
Daisy Miller is an 1878 novella by Henry James first appearing in Cornhill Magazine in Jun-July 1879, and in book form the following year. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a sophisticated compatriot of hers...
(1879); in which the eponymous protagonist, the young and innocent American Daisy Miller, finds her values in conflict with European sophistication; and The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880–81 and then as a book in 1881...
(1881), in which a young American woman finds that her upbringing has ill prepared her against two scheming American expatriates during her travels in Europe. The Bostonians
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 centers on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's cousin...
(1886) is set in the era of the rising feminist movement. What Maisie Knew (1897) depicts a preadolescent girl who must choose between her parents and a motherly old governess. In The Wings of the Dove
The Wings of the Dove
The Wings of the Dove is a 1902 novel by Henry James. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her impact on the people around her...
(1902) an inheritance destroys the love of a young couple. James considered The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review . This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James's final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad, his widowed fiancée's supposedly...
(1903) his most "perfect" work of art. James's most famous novella is The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...
, a ghost story in which the question of childhood corruption obsesses a governess. Although James is best known for his novels, his essays are now attracting a more general audience.
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, and was opened in 1902 by Sir Henry Thompson....
and his ashes are interred at Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
.
Career in letters
James early established the precedent of pursuing his career as a man of letters. His first published work was a review of a stage performance, "Miss Maggie Mitchell in Fanchon the Cricket," published in 1863, that reflected a life-long interest in the actor's art. From an early age James read, criticised, and learned from the classics of English, American, French, Italian, German and (in translation) Russian literatureRussian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
. In 1863, he anonymously published his first short story, A Tragedy of Error
A Tragedy of Error
A Tragedy of Error is the title of a short story by American writer Henry James, his first, written at the age of 21 and published anonymously in the February 1864 issue of Continental Monthly...
. Until his fiftieth year he supported himself by writing, principally by contributing extensively to illustrated monthly magazines in the United States and Great Britain, but after his sister's death in 1892 his royalties were supplemented by a modest income from the family's properties in Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
.
Until late in life his novels were serialised in magazines before book publication, and he wrote the monthly instalments as they were due, allowing him little opportunity to revise the final work. To supplement his income he also wrote frequently for newspapers, and from 1863 to his death he maintained a strenuous schedule of publication in a variety of genres and media. In his criticism of fiction, the theatre, and painting he developed ideas concerning the unity of the arts; he wrote two full-length biographies, two volumes of memoirs of his childhood and a long fragment of autobiography; 22 novels, including two left unfinished at his death, 112 tales of varying lengths, fifteen plays, and dozens of travel and topical essays.
Biographers and critics have identified Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
, Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
, and Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
as important influences. He heavily revised his major novels and many of his stories for a selected edition of his fiction, whose twenty-three volumes formed an artistic autobiography which he called "The New York Edition" to emphasise his continuing ties to the city of his birth. In his essay The Art of Fiction
Partial Portraits
Partial Portraits is a book of literary criticism by Henry James published in 1888. The book collected essays that James had written over the preceding decade, mostly on English and American writers. But the book also offered interesting treatments of Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant and Ivan...
, and in prefaces to each volume of The New York Edition, James explained his views of the art of fiction, emphasising the importance to him of realist portrayals of character as seen through the eyes and thoughts of an embodied narrator.
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
Daisy Miller
Daisy Miller is an 1878 novella by Henry James first appearing in Cornhill Magazine in Jun-July 1879, and in book form the following year. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a sophisticated compatriot of hers...
in 1882. From 1890 to 1892, he made a concerted effort to succeed commercially 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. The effort was made avowedly to improve his finances, and after his sister Alice's death in 1892, as he had a modest independent income, he halted his theatrical efforts. 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 James wrote a long drama, Guy Domville
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 of James' attempt to conquer the theater...
, which Alexander produced. There was a noisy uproar 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 considerably upset. The incident was not repeated, 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 Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
's The Importance of Being Earnest
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 St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...
, which Alexander thought would have better prospects for the coming Season. After the stresses and disappointment of this effort James insisted that he would write no more for the theatre, but within weeks had agreed to write a curtain-raiser for Ellen Terry. 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 6 May 1910, plunged London into mourning and the theatres were 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
The Outcry is a novel by Henry James published in 1911. This light comedy was originally conceived as a play. James cast the material in a three-act drama in 1909, but like so many of his plays, it failed to be produced. In 1911 James converted the play into a novel, which was successful with the...
was a best-seller in the United States when it was published in 1911. During the years 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 on the London stage.
Biographer Leon Edel
Leon Edel
Joseph Leon Edel was a North American literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel....
was the first to call attention to the importance of the "theatrical years" 1890–1895 for James's later work. Following the commercial failure of his novel The Tragic Muse
The Tragic Muse
The Tragic Muse is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1889-1890 and then as a book in 1890...
, in 1890, James renounced novel writing and dedicated himself to short fiction and plays, which he described as related forms. Between 1890 and 1895, he sketched in his notebooks plots and themes of nearly all his later novels, which he first conceived as short stories or plays. The structure of his late novels was "scenic" in James's special sense, in that they followed the scene-by-scene structure of a French play in the classical mode, and he freely translated short stories into plays and vice versa. The use of an observer's consciousness and the sense of the action as a performance became most marked in James's fiction in and after the 1890s. Failing to make a commercial success on the stage, however, and finding that the stresses of theatrical work were difficult to sustain, he returned to the writing of long, serialised novels, which again became the mainstay of his income. With his new private income as well, he was able to maintain a country house and rooms in London.
Leon Edel argued in his psychoanalytic biography that James was deeply 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 James's fiction, which partly freed him from his fears. Other biographers and scholars have not accepted this account, however; the more common view being that of F.O. Matthiessen, who wrote: "Instead of being crushed by the collapse of his hopes [for the theatre]... he felt a resurgence of new energy."
James returned to the United States in 1904–1905 for a lecture tour to recoup his finances and to visit his family. His essays describing that visit, published as The American Scene
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 Fortnightly Review in 1905 and 1906...
, were perhaps his most important work of social commentary. In them he described the rise of commerce and democracy, the impact of free immigration on American culture, and his agonised sense that his deeply felt American nationality was threatened by these upheavals.
James's biographers
F. W. Dupee
F. W. Dupee was a highly distinguished American literary critic, essayist for Partisan Review and the New York Review of Books, and professor emeritus of English at Columbia University. He was an eminent scholar of Henry James, and also wrote on contemporary poetry, fiction, and American culture...
, in several well-regarded 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. This seemed to support literary critics like Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.- Biography :Brooks was educated at Harvard University and graduated in 1908...
and Vernon Parrington who had condemned James's expatriation and criticised his work as effeminate and deracinated [not related to his roots]; Leon Edel used it as the premise of his influential biography which held the field for many years.
Dupee had not had access to the James family papers and worked principally from James's published memoir of his older brother, William, and the limited collection of letters edited by Percy Lubbock, heavily weighted toward James's last years. His account therefore moved directly from James's childhood, when he trailed after his older brother, to elderly invalidism. As more material became available to scholars, including the diaries of contemporaries and hundreds of affectionate and sometimes erotic letters written by James to younger men, the picture of neurotic celibacy gave way to a portrait of a closeted homosexual, although as author Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA is a British literary theorist and critic, who is regarded as one of Britain's most influential living literary critics...
has stated, "... gay critics debate exactly how repressed his (probable) homosexuality was ..."
James's letters to expatriate American sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen
Hendrik Christian Andersen
Hendrik Christian Andersen was a Norwegian-American sculptor, painter and urban planner.-Background:...
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
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
even though sexagenarian Henry". How accurate that description might have been is the subject of contention among James's biographers, but the letters to Andersen were occasionally quasi-erotic: "I put, my dear boy, my arm around you, & feel the pulsation, thereby, as it were, of our excellent future & your admirable endowment." To his homosexual friend Howard Sturgis
Howard Sturgis
-Biography:Born into an affluent New England family in London, he attended Eton and Cambridge and was friends with Henry James and Edith Wharton. After the death of his parents, he moved into a country house with his lover William Haynes-Smith...
, James could write: "I repeat, almost to indiscretion, that I could live with you. Meanwhile I can only try to live without you."
His many letters to the young gay men who made up a large fraction of his close male friends are more forthcoming. In a letter to Howard Sturgis, following a long visit, James refers jocularly to their "happy little congress of two" and in letters to Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large...
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
Walter Van Rensselaer Berry
Walter Van Rensselaer Berry was an American lawyer, diplomat, Francophile, and friend of several great writers.-Biography:Berry was born in Paris, a descendant of the Van Rensselaer family of New York. After attending St...
printed by the Black Sun Press
Black Sun Press
The Black Sun Press was an English language book publisher founded in 1927 as Éditions Narcisse by poet Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby , American expatriates living in Paris...
have long been celebrated for their lightly veiled eroticism.
He corresponded in almost equally extravagant language with his many female friends, writing, for example, to fellow-novelist Lucy Clifford
Lucy Clifford
Lucy Clifford , better known as Mrs. W. K. Clifford, was a British novelist and journalist, and the wife of William Kingdon Clifford.-Biography:...
: "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 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 [Jones's pet name for James] has "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
Constance Fenimore Woolson was an American novelist and short story writer. She was a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, and is best known for fictions about the Great Lakes region, the American South, and American expatriates in Europe.-In America: the story-writer:Woolson was born in...
, 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 Leon Edel's
Leon Edel
Joseph Leon Edel was a North American literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel....
biography and play a central role in a study by Lyndall Gordon
Lyndall Gordon
Lyndall Gordon is a South African writer and academic, known for her literary biographies. Born in Cape Town, she was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University...
. (Edel conjectured that Woolson was in love with James and killed herself in part because of his coldness, but Woolson's biographers have strongly objected to Edel's account.
Style and themes
James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from the Old WorldOld World
The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....
(Europe), embodying a feudal civilization that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
(United States), where people are often brash, open, and assertive
Assertiveness
Assertiveness is a particular mode of communication. Dorland's Medical Dictionary defines assertiveness as:During the second half of the 20th century, assertiveness was increasingly singled out as a behavioral skill taught by many personal development experts, behavior therapists, and cognitive...
and embody the virtues—freedom and a more highly evolved moral character—of the new American society. James explores this clash of personalities 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:
Critics have jokingly described three phases in the development of James's prose: "James the First, James the Second, 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
The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880–81 and then as a book in 1881...
, 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 serialised 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. 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
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, who not only read some of his novels but also wrote essays about them. Then and later many readers find the late style difficult and unnecessary; his friend Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
, who admired him greatly, said that there were passages in his work that were all but incomprehensible. H.G. Wells harshly portrayed James as a hippopotamus laboriously attempting to pick up a pea that has got into a corner of its cage. Some critics have claimed that the more elaborate manner was a result of James taking up the practice of dictating to a secretary. He was afflicted with a stutter and compensated by speaking slowly and deliberately. The late style does become more difficult in the years when he dictates, but James also was able to revise typewritten drafts more extensively, and his few surviving drafts show that the later works are more heavily revised and redrafted. In some cases this leads critics to prefer the earlier, unrevised versions of some works because the older style is thought to be closer to the original conception and spirit of the work, Daisy Miller being a case in point: most of the current reprints of this novel contain the unrevised text. On the other hand, the late revision of the early novel The Portrait of a Lady is generally much preferred to the first edition, even by those who dislike the late style, because of the power of the imagery and the depth of characterisation, while his shorter late fiction, such as The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...
, is considered highly accessible and remains popular with readers.
More important for his work overall may have been his position as an expatriate
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
, and in other ways an outsider, living in Europe. While he came from middle-class and provincial belongings (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
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
, 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
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
Anglo-American culture, rather feminine, and who was shadowed by the cloud of prejudice that then and later accompanied suspicions of his homosexuality. Edmund Wilson famously compared James's objectivity to Shakespeare's:
It is also possible to see many of James's stories as psychological thought-experiments. 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 alternate futures and possibilities, as most markedly in "The Jolly Corner
The Jolly Corner
"The Jolly Corner" is a short story by Henry James published first in the magazine The English Review of December, 1908. One of James' most noted ghost stories, "The Jolly Corner" describes the adventures of Spencer Brydon as he prowls the now-empty New York house where he grew up.He encounters a...
", in which the protagonist and a ghost-doppelganger live alternate American and European lives; and in others, like The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review . This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James's final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad, his widowed fiancée's supposedly...
, 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
The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880–81 and then as a book in 1881...
, 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
Roderick Hudson is a novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1875 as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly, it is a bildungsroman that traces the development of the title character, a sculptor.-Plot summary:...
(1875) is a Künstlerroman
Künstlerroman
A Künstlerroman , meaning "artist's novel" in German, is a narrative about an artist's growth to maturity. It may be classified as a specific sub-genre of Bildungsroman; such a work, usually a novel, tends to depict the conflicts of a sensitive youth against the values of a bourgeois society of his...
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 fatale. 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.
Although Roderick Hudson featured mostly American characters in a European setting, James made the Europe–America contrast even more explicit in his next novel. In fact, the contrast could be considered the leading theme of The American (1877). This book is a combination of social comedy and melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
concerning the adventures and misadventures of Christopher Newman, an essentially good-hearted but rather gauche American businessman on his first tour of Europe. Newman is looking for a world different from the simple, harsh realities of 19th century American business. He encounters both the beauty and the ugliness of Europe, and learns not to take either for granted.
Washington Square
Washington Square (novel)
Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, domineering father...
(1880) is a deceptively simple tragicomedy
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...
that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, domineering father. The book is often compared to Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
's work for the clarity and grace of its prose and its intense focus on family relationships. James was not particularly enthusiastic about Jane Austen, so he might not have regarded the comparison as flattering. In fact, James was not enthusiastic about Washington Square itself. He tried to read it over for inclusion in the New York Edition
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 in 1907-1909, with a photogravure frontispiece for each volume by Alvin Langdon Coburn...
of his fiction (1907–09) but found that he could not. So he excluded the novel from the edition. But other readers have enjoyed the book enough to make it one of the popular works in the Jamesian canon. Washington Square was turned into a dramatic musical-opera in 1972 by Jerome Walman
Jerome Walman
Jerome Walman is an American composer and certified instructor of the Schillinger System of Musical Composition. He studied at Boston University, Juilliard School of Music, Berklee School of Music, and at New York University . Walman is one of the last certified of instructors of the Schillinger...
.
In The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880–81 and then as a book in 1881...
(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, 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 Bostonians
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 centers on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's cousin...
(1886) is a bittersweet tragicomedy that centres on Basil Ransom, an unbending political conservative
American conservatism
Conservatism in the United States has played an important role in American politics since the 1950s. Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, preservation of "the rule of law and the Christian religion", and...
from Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's cousin and a zealous Boston feminist; and Verena Tarrant, a pretty protégée of Olive's in the feminist movement. The storyline concerns the contest between Ransom and Olive for Verena's allegiance and affection, though the novel also includes a wide panorama of political activists, newspaper people, and quirky eccentrics.
James followed with The Princess Casamassima
The Princess Casamassima
The Princess Casamassima is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1885-1886 and then as a book in 1886. It is the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in radical politics and a terrorist...
(1886), the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in far left politics and a terrorist assassination plot. The book is something of a lone sport in the Jamesian canon for dealing with such a violent political subject. But it is often paired with The Bostonians, which is concerned with political issues.
Just as James was beginning his ultimately disastrous attempt to conquer the stage, he wrote The Tragic Muse
The Tragic Muse
The Tragic Muse is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1889-1890 and then as a book in 1890...
(1890). This novel offers a wide, cheerful panorama of English life and follows the fortunes of two would-be artists: Nick Dormer, who vacillates between a political career and his efforts to become a painter, and Miriam Rooth, an actress striving for artistic and commercial success. A huge cast of supporting characters help and hinder their pursuits. The book reflects James's consuming interest in the theatre and is often considered to mark the close of the second or middle phase of his career.
After the failure of his "dramatic experiment" James returned to his fiction and began to probe his characters' consciousness. His style started to grow in complexity to reflect the greater depth of his analysis. The Spoils of Poynton
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 half-length novel describes the struggle between Mrs. Gereth, a widow of impeccable taste and iron will, and her son Owen over...
(1897) is a half-length novel that describes the struggle between Mrs. Gereth, a widow of impeccable taste and iron will, and her son Owen over a houseful of precious antique furniture. The story is largely told from the viewpoint of Fleda Vetch, a young woman in love with Owen but sympathetic to Mrs Gereth's anguish over losing the antiques she patiently collected.
James continued the more involved, psychological approach to his fiction with What Maisie Knew
What Maisie Knew
What Maisie Knew is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in the Chap-Book and in the New Review in 1897 and then as a book later in the same year. The story of the sensitive daughter of divorced and irresponsible parents, What Maisie Knew has great contemporary relevance as an...
(1897), the story of the sensitive daughter of divorced and irresponsible parents. The novel has great contemporary relevance as an unflinching account of a wildly dysfunctional family
Dysfunctional family
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often abuse on the part of individual members occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is...
.
The third period of James's career reached its most significant achievement in three novels published just after the turn of the century. Critic F. O. Matthiessen
F. O. Matthiessen
Francis Otto Matthiessen was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies.-Scholarly work:...
called this "trilogy" James's major phase, and these novels have certainly received intense critical study. It was the second-written of the books, The Wings of the Dove
The Wings of the Dove
The Wings of the Dove is a 1902 novel by Henry James. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her impact on the people around her...
(1902) that was the first published. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress
Inheritance
Inheritance is the practice of passing on property, titles, debts, rights and obligations upon the death of an individual. It has long played an important role in human societies...
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".
The next published of the three novels, The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review . This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James's final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad, his widowed fiancée's supposedly...
(1903), is a dark comedy that follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether
Lambert Strether
Lewis Lambert Strether is the protagonist of Henry James's 1903 novel The Ambassadors. He is a cultured man in his fifties from the fictional town of Woollett, Massachusetts, who is dispatched to Paris to find Chad, the wayward son of his fiancee Mrs Newsome...
to Europe in pursuit of his widowed fiancée's supposedly wayward son. Strether is to bring the young man back to the family business, but he encounters unexpected complications. The third-person narrative is told exclusively from Strether's point of view. In his preface to the New York Edition
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 in 1907-1909, with a photogravure frontispiece for each volume by Alvin Langdon Coburn...
text of the novel, James placed this book at the top of his achievements, which has occasioned some critical disagreement. The Golden Bowl
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' career...
(1904) is a complex, intense study of marriage and adultery that completes the "major phase" and, essentially, James's career in the novel. The book explores the tangle of interrelationships between a father and daughter and their respective spouses. The novel focuses deeply and almost exclusively on the consciousness of the central characters, with sometimes obsessive detail and powerful insight.
Shorter narratives
Just as the contrast between Europe and America was a predominant theme in James's early novels, many of his first tales also explored the clash between the Old World and the New. In "A Passionate Pilgrim
A Passionate Pilgrim
A Passionate Pilgrim is a novella by Henry James, first published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1871. The story was the earliest fiction that James included in the New York Edition of his works. Set in England, the tale shows James' strong interest in the contrast between the Old World and the New...
" (1871), the earliest fiction that James included in the New York Edition
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 in 1907-1909, with a photogravure frontispiece for each volume by Alvin Langdon Coburn...
, the difference between America and Europe erupts into open conflict, which leads to a sadly ironic
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
ending. The story's technique still seems somewhat inexpert, with passages of local color description occasionally interrupting the flow of the narrative. But James manages to craft an interesting and believable example of what he would call the "Americano-European legend".
James published many stories before what would prove to be his greatest success with the readers of his time, "Daisy Miller
Daisy Miller
Daisy Miller is an 1878 novella by Henry James first appearing in Cornhill Magazine in Jun-July 1879, and in book form the following year. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a sophisticated compatriot of hers...
" (1878). This story portrays the confused courtship
Courtship
Courtship is the period in a couple's relationship which precedes their engagement and marriage, or establishment of an agreed relationship of a more enduring kind. In courtship, a couple get to know each other and decide if there will be an engagement or other such agreement...
of the title character, a free-spirited American girl, by Winterbourne, a compatriot of hers with much more sophistication. His pursuit of Daisy is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates they meet in Switzerland and Italy. Her lack of understanding of the social mores of the society she so desperately wishes to enter ultimately leads to tragedy.
As James moved on from studies of the Europe-America clash and the American girl in his novels, his shorter works also explored new subjects in the 1880s. "The Aspern Papers
The Aspern Papers
The Aspern Papers is a novella written by Henry James, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1888, with its first book publication later in the same year. One of James' best-known and most acclaimed longer tales, The Aspern Papers is based on an anecdote that James heard about a Shelley...
" (1888) is one of James's best-known and most acclaimed longer tales. The storyline is based on an anecdote that James heard about a Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
devotee who tried to obtain some valuable letters written by the poet. Set in a brilliantly described Venice, the story demonstrates James's ability to generate almost unbearable suspense while never neglecting the development of his characters. Another fine example of the middle phase of James's career in short narrative is "The Pupil
The Pupil
The Pupil is a short story by Henry James, first published in Longman's Magazine in 1891. It is the emotional story of a precocious young boy growing up in a mendacious and dishonorable family. He befriends his tutor, who is the only adult in his life that he can trust...
" (1891), the story of a precocious young boy growing up in a mendacious and dishonorable family. He befriends his tutor, who is the only adult in his life that he can trust. James presents their relationship with sympathy and insight, and the story reaches what some have considered the status of classical tragedy.
"The Altar of the Dead
The Altar of the Dead
"The Altar of the Dead" is a short story by Henry James, first published in his collection Terminations in 1895. A fable of literally life and death significance, the story explores how the protagonist tries to keep the remembrance of his dead friends, to save them from being forgotten entirely in...
", first published in James's collection Terminations in 1895 after the story failed of magazine publication, is a fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
of literally life
Personal life
Personal life is the course of an individual's life, especially when viewed as the sum of personal choices contributing to one's personal identity. It is a common notion in modern existence—although more so in more prosperous parts of the world such as Western Europe and North America...
and death significance. The story explores how the protagonist tries to keep the remembrance of his dead friends, to save them from being forgotten entirely in the rush of everyday events. He meets a woman who shares his ideals, only to find that the past
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
places what seems to be an impassable barrier between them. Although James was not religious in any conventional sense, the story shows a deep spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
in its treatment of mortality and the transcendent power of unselfish love.
The final phase of James's short narratives shows the same characteristics as the final phase of his novels: a more involved style, a deeper psychological approach, and a sharper focus on his central characters. Probably his most popular short narrative among today's readers, "The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...
" (1898) is a ghost story
Ghost story
A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially, the term can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has...
that has lent itself well to operatic
The Turn of the Screw (opera)
The Turn of the Screw is a 20th century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, "wife of the artist John Piper, who had been a friend of the composer since 1935 and had provided designs for several of the operas". The libretto is based on the novella...
and film adaptation. With its possibly ambiguous
Ambiguity
Ambiguity of words or phrases is the ability to express more than one interpretation. It is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information.Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity...
content and powerful narrative technique, the story challenges the reader to determine if the protagonist, an unnamed governess
Governess
A governess is a girl or woman employed to teach and train children in a private household. In contrast to a nanny or a babysitter, she concentrates on teaching children, not on meeting their physical needs...
, is correctly reporting events or is instead an unreliable neurotic with an overheated imagination
Imagination
Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming mental images, sensations and concepts, in a moment when they are not perceived through sight, hearing or other senses...
. To further muddy the waters, her written account of the experience—a frame tale—is being read many years later at a Christmas house party by someone who claims to have known her.
"The Beast in the Jungle
The Beast in the Jungle
The Beast in the Jungle is a 1903 novella by Henry James, first published as part of the collection, The Better Sort. Almost universally considered one of James' finest short narratives, this story treats appropriately universal themes: loneliness, fate, love and death...
" (1903) is almost universally considered to be one of James's finest short narratives, and has often been compared with The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review . This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James's final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad, his widowed fiancée's supposedly...
in its meditation on experience
Experience
Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event....
or the lack of it. The story also treats other universal themes: loneliness
Loneliness
Loneliness is an unpleasant feeling in which a person feels a strong sense of emptiness and solitude resulting from inadequate levels of social relationships. However, it is a subjective experience...
, fate
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...
, love and death. The parable of John Marcher and his peculiar destiny speaks to anyone who has speculated on the worth and meaning of human life. Among his last efforts in short narrative, "The Jolly Corner
The Jolly Corner
"The Jolly Corner" is a short story by Henry James published first in the magazine The English Review of December, 1908. One of James' most noted ghost stories, "The Jolly Corner" describes the adventures of Spencer Brydon as he prowls the now-empty New York house where he grew up.He encounters a...
" (1908) is usually held to be one of James's best ghost stories. The tale describes the adventures of Spencer Brydon as he prowls the now-empty New York house where he grew up. Brydon encounters a "sensation more complex than had ever before found itself consistent with sanity".
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 FictionPartial Portraits
Partial Portraits is a book of literary criticism by Henry James published in 1888. The book collected essays that James had written over the preceding decade, mostly on English and American writers. But the book also offered interesting treatments of Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant and Ivan...
(1884), he argued against rigid proscriptions 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 valuable critical articles on other novelists; typical is his insightful book-length study
Hawthorne (book)
Hawthorne is a book of literary criticism by Henry James published in 1879. The book was an insightful study of James' great predecessor, Nathaniel Hawthorne. James gave extended consideration to each of Hawthorne's novels and a selection of his short stories. He also reviewed Hawthorne's life and...
of his American predecessor Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
. When he assembled the New York Edition
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 in 1907-1909, with a photogravure frontispiece for each volume by Alvin Langdon Coburn...
of his fiction in his final years, James wrote a series of prefaces that subjected his own work to the same searching, occasionally harsh criticism.
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 of James' attempt to conquer the theater...
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
Notebooks of Henry James
The Notebooks of Henry James are private notes made by the Anglo-American novelist and critic. Usually the notes are of a professional nature and concern ideas for possible or ongoing fictions, but there are a number of personal notes as well...
he maintained that his theatrical experiment benefited his novels and tales by helping him dramatise his characters' thoughts and emotions. James produced a small but valuable amount of theatrical criticism, including perceptive appreciations of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
.
With his wide-ranging artistic interests, James occasionally wrote on the visual arts. Perhaps his most valuable contribution was his favourable assessment of fellow expatriate John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
, a painter whose critical status has improved markedly in recent decades. James also wrote sometimes charming, sometimes brooding articles about various places he visited and lived in. His most famous books of travel writing include Italian Hours
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 essays to create a more consistent whole...
(an example of the charming approach) and The American Scene
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 Fortnightly Review in 1905 and 1906...
(most definitely on the brooding side).
James was one of the great letter-writers of any era. More than ten thousand of his personal letters are extant, and over three thousand have been published in a large number of collections. A complete edition of James's letters began publication in 2006 with two volumes covering the 1855–1872 period, edited by Pierre Walker and Greg Zacharias. James's correspondents included celebrated contemporaries like Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
, Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
and Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
, along with many others in his wide circle of friends and acquaintances. The letters range from the "mere twaddle of graciousness" 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
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 themes:...
, Notes of a Son and Brother
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 of his beloved cousin, Minny Temple, from...
, and the unfinished The Middle Years
The Middle Years (book)
The Middle Years is an incomplete book of autobiography by Henry James, posthumously published in 1917. The book covers the early years of James' residence in Europe and his meetings with writers such as George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, and James Russell Lowell.-Summary and themes:The seven chapters...
. 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.
Henry James was only twenty-two when he wrote The Noble School of Fiction for The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
s first issue in 1865. He wrote, in all, over two hundred essays and book, art and theatre reviews for the magazine.
Criticism, biographies and fictional treatments
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
once 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 Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
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, writing to Lytton Strachey, 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?"
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 Wagenknecht
Edward Wagenknecht 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 various universities, including the University of Chicago and Boston University...
offers an assessment that echoes Theodora Bosanquet's:
Early biographies of James echoed the unflattering picture of him drawn in early criticism. F.W. Dupee, as noted above, characterised James as neurotically withdrawn and fearful, and although Dupee lacked access to primary materials his view has remained persuasive in academic circles, partly because Leon Edel
Leon Edel
Joseph Leon Edel was a North American literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel....
's massive five-volume work, published from 1953 to 1972, seemed to butress it with extensive documentation. Michael Anesko, Fred Kaplan, and Sheldon Novick, working from primary materials, have disputed the factual basis of Dupee's and Edel's accounts. Other critics and biographers have disputed Edel's interpretations and conclusions. James has also figured in at least a half-dozen novels. Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.Tóibín is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University in New Jersey and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the...
used an extensive list of biographies of Henry James and his family for his widely admired 2004 novel, The Master
The Master (novel)
The Master is a novel by Irish writer Colm Tóibín. It is his fifth novel and it was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize and received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year Award and, in France, Le prix du meilleur livre...
, which is a third person narrative with James as the central character, and deals with specific episodes from his life during the period between 1895 and 1899. Author, Author
Author, Author (novel)
Author, Author is a novel by David Lodge, written in 2004. The book is based on the life of the author Henry James. It was released at about the same time as The Master by Colm Tóibín and other books about James, and Lodge wrote The Year of Henry James: The Story of a Novel about this...
, a novel by David Lodge
David Lodge (author)
David John Lodge CBE, is an English author.In his novels, Lodge often satirises academia in general and the humanities in particular. He was brought up Catholic and has described himself as an "agnostic Catholic". Many of his characters are Catholic and their Catholicism is a major theme...
published in the same year, was based on James's efforts to conquer the stage in the 1890s. In 2002 Emma Tennant
Emma Tennant
Emma Christina Tennant FRSL is a British novelist and editor. She is known for a postmodern approach to her fiction, which is often imbued with fantasy or magic. Several of her novels give a feminist or dreamlike twist to classic stories, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr....
published Felony: The Private History of The Aspern Papers, a novel that fictionalised the relationship between James and American novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson
Constance Fenimore Woolson
Constance Fenimore Woolson was an American novelist and short story writer. She was a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, and is best known for fictions about the Great Lakes region, the American South, and American expatriates in Europe.-In America: the story-writer:Woolson was born in...
and the possible effects of that relationship on The Aspern Papers
The Aspern Papers
The Aspern Papers is a novella written by Henry James, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1888, with its first book publication later in the same year. One of James' best-known and most acclaimed longer tales, The Aspern Papers is based on an anecdote that James heard about a Shelley...
.
The published criticism of James's work has reached enormous proportions. The volume of criticism of The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...
alone has become extremely large for such a brief work. The Henry James Review
The Henry James Review
The Henry James Review is an academic journal founded in 1980 and is the official publication of the Henry James Society. The HJR is dedicated to the scholarly, critical, and theoretical study of the American writer Henry James. Each issue focuses on a specific theme of interest and seeks to...
, published three times a year, offers criticism of James's entire range of writings, and many other articles and book-length studies appear regularly. Some guides to this extensive literature can be found on the external sites listed below.
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...
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
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
and William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
. 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."
Legacy
Perhaps the most prominent examples of James's legacy in recent years have been the film versions of several of his novels and stories. Three of James's novels were filmed by the team of Ismail Merchant and James IvoryMerchant Ivory Productions
Merchant Ivory Productions is a film company founded in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory. Their films were for the most part produced by the former, directed by the latter, and scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, with the noted exception of a few films. The films were often...
: The Europeans
The Europeans (film)
The Europeans is a 1979 Merchant Ivory Film, directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant, and with an adapted screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It is based upon the novel, The Europeans, by Henry James. It was entered into the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:*Lee Remick - Eugenia...
(1978), The Bostonians
The Bostonians (film)
The Bostonians is a 1984 Merchant Ivory film based on Henry James's novel of the same name. The film stars Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Reeve, Madeleine Potter and Jessica Tandy. The movie received respectable reviews and showings at arthouse theaters in New York, London and other cities...
(1984) and The Golden Bowl
The Golden Bowl (film)
The Golden Bowl is a 2000 American/British/French drama film directed by James Ivory. The screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is based on the 1904 novel of the same title by Henry James, who considered the work his masterpiece.-Plot:...
(2000). The Iain Softley
Iain Softley
Iain Softley is an English film director. He was educated at St Benedict's School, Ealing, where he played the part of Thomas Becket in its 1975 production of T. S...
-directed version of The Wings of the Dove (1997) was successful with both critics and audiences, and Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter is an English actress of film, stage, and television. She made her acting debut in a television adaptation of K. M. Peyton's A Pattern of Roses before winning her first film role as the titular character in Lady Jane...
received an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
nomination as Best Actress for her memorable portrayal of Kate Croy. Agnieszka Holland
Agnieszka Holland
Agnieszka Holland is a Polish film and TV director and screenwriter. Best recognized for her highly political contributions to Polish cinema, Holland is one of Poland's most prominent filmmakers.-Personal life:...
's Washington Square
Washington Square (film)
Washington Square is a 1997 American drama film directed by Agnieszka Holland. The screenplay by Carol Doyle is based on the 1880 novel of the same name by Henry James, which was filmed as The Heiress in 1949.-Plot summary:...
(1997) was well received by critics, and Jane Campion
Jane Campion
Jane Campion is a filmmaker and screenwriter. She is one of the most internationally successful New Zealand directors, although most of her work has been made in or financed by other countries, principally Australia – where she now lives – and the United States...
tried her hand with The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady (film)
The Portrait of a Lady is a 1996 film adaptation of Henry James's novel The Portrait of a Lady directed by Jane Campion.The film stars Nicole Kidman, Barbara Hershey, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Martin Donovan, Shelley Duvall, Richard E...
(1996) but with much less success. In earlier times Jack Clayton
Jack Clayton
Jack Clayton was a British film director who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen.-Career:A native of East Sussex, Clayton started his career as a child actor on the 1929 film Dark Red Roses...
's The Innocents (1961) brought The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...
to vivid life on film, and William Wyler
William Wyler
William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...
's The Heiress
The Heiress
The Heiress is a 1949 American drama film. It was written by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, adapted from their 1947 play of the same title that was based on the 1880 novel Washington Square by Henry James. The film was directed by William Wyler, with starring performances by Olivia de Havilland as...
(1949), adapted from Washington Square
Washington Square (novel)
Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, domineering father...
, won four Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
, including a Best Actress award for Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland
Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...
as Catherine Sloper.
Most of James's work has remained continuously in print since its first publication, and he continues to be a major figure in realist fiction, influencing generations of novelists. James has allowed the genre of the novel to become worthy of a literary critic's attention. James has formulated a theory of fiction that many today still discuss and debate. Testifying to his importance, a character named "Henry James" appears in at least a half-dozen novels, as noted above, the best-known of which is The Master by Colm Toibin
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.Tóibín is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University in New Jersey and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the...
. Such disparate writers as Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
with Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly (1994), Louis Auchincloss
Louis Auchincloss
Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American lawyer, novelist, historian, and essayist. He is best known as a prolific novelist who parlayed his firsthand knowledge into dozens of finely wrought books exploring the private lives of America's East Coast patrician class...
with The Ambassadress (1950), Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
with The Real Thing (1982), and Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.-Biography:Hollinghurst was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of James Hollinghurst, a bank manager, and his wife, Elizabeth...
with The Line of Beauty
The Line of Beauty
The Line of Beauty is a 2004 Booker Prize-winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst.-Plot introduction:Set in Britain in the early to mid-1980s, the story surrounds the post-Oxford life of the young gay protagonist, Nick Guest....
(2004) were explicitly influenced by James's works. James was definitely out of his element when it came to music, but Benjamin Britten's
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
operatic version of "The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw (opera)
The Turn of the Screw is a 20th century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, "wife of the artist John Piper, who had been a friend of the composer since 1935 and had provided designs for several of the operas". The libretto is based on the novella...
" (1954) has become one of the composer's most popular works. William Tuckett converted the story into a ballet in 1999.
Even when the influence is not so obvious, James can cast a powerful spell. In 1954, when the shades of depression were thickening fast, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
wrote an emotional letter in which he tried to steady himself as he thought James would: "Pretty soon I will have to throw this away so I better try to be calm like Henry James. Did you ever read Henry James? He was a great writer who came to Venice and looked out the window and smoked his cigar and thought." The odd, perhaps subconscious or accidental allusion to "The Aspern Papers
The Aspern Papers
The Aspern Papers is a novella written by Henry James, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1888, with its first book publication later in the same year. One of James' best-known and most acclaimed longer tales, The Aspern Papers is based on an anecdote that James heard about a Shelley...
" is striking. More recently, James' writing was even used to promote Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce Limited
Rolls-Royce Limited was a renowned British car and, from 1914 on, aero-engine manufacturing company founded by Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce on 15 March 1906 as the result of a partnership formed in 1904....
automobiles: the tagline "Live all you can, it's a mistake not to", originally spoken by The Ambassadors'
The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review . This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James's final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad, his widowed fiancée's supposedly...
Lambert Strether, was used in one advertisement. This is somewhat ironic, considering the novel's sardonic treatment of the "great new force" of mass marketing.
Novels
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The Princess Casamassima The Princess Casamassima is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1885-1886 and then as a book in 1886. It is the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in radical politics and a terrorist... (1886) 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... (1888) The Tragic Muse The Tragic Muse is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1889-1890 and then as a book in 1890... (1890) The Other House The Other House is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in the Illustrated London News in 1896 and then as a book later the same year. Set in England, this book is something of an oddity in the Jamesian canon for its plot revolving around a murder. The novel was originally planned... (1896) 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 half-length novel describes the struggle between Mrs. Gereth, a widow of impeccable taste and iron will, and her son Owen over... (1897) What Maisie Knew What Maisie Knew is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in the Chap-Book and in the New Review in 1897 and then as a book later in the same year. The story of the sensitive daughter of divorced and irresponsible parents, What Maisie Knew has great contemporary relevance as an... (1897) 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 social set by a young girl coming of age, the novel expanded into a... (1899) The Sacred Fount The Sacred Fount is a novel by Henry James, first published in 1901. This strange, often baffling book concerns an unnamed narrator who attempts to discover the truth about the love lives of his fellow-guests at a weekend party in the English countryside... (1901) |
The Wings of the Dove The Wings of the Dove is a 1902 novel by Henry James. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her impact on the people around her... (1902) The Ambassadors The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review . This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James's final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad, his widowed fiancée's supposedly... (1903) 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' career... (1904) The Whole Family The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors is a collaborative novel told in twelve chapters, each by a different author. This unusual project was conceived by novelist William Dean Howells and carried out under the direction of Harper's Bazaar editor Elizabeth Jordan, who would write one of the... (collaborative novel with eleven other authors, 1908) The Outcry The Outcry is a novel by Henry James published in 1911. This light comedy was originally conceived as a play. James cast the material in a three-act drama in 1909, but like so many of his plays, it failed to be produced. In 1911 James converted the play into a novel, which was successful with the... (1911) The Ivory Tower The Ivory Tower is an unfinished novel by Henry James, posthumously published in 1917. The novel is a brooding story of Gilded Age America... (unfinished, published posthumously 1917) The Sense of the Past The Sense of the Past is an unfinished novel by Henry James, posthumously published in 1917. The novel is at once an eerie account of time travel and a bittersweet comedy of manners... (unfinished, published posthumously 1917) |
Short stories and novellas
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The Author of Beltraffio The Author of Beltraffio is a short story by Henry James, first published in the English Illustrated Magazine in 1884. This macabre account of desperate family infighting eventually leads to a tragic conclusion... (1884) The Romance of Certain Old Clothes The Romance of Certain Old Clothes was written by Henry James in February 1868 and was first published in The Atlantic Monthly. The original debut was in Volume 21, Issue 124. This short fictional story can be considered Gothic Literature due to its ghostly nature, social and contemporary issues... (1885) The Aspern Papers The Aspern Papers is a novella written by Henry James, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1888, with its first book publication later in the same year. One of James' best-known and most acclaimed longer tales, The Aspern Papers is based on an anecdote that James heard about a Shelley... (1888) A London Life A London Life is a novella by Henry James, first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1888. The plot revolves around a crumbling marriage and its impact on many other people, especially Laura Wing, the sister of the soon-to-be-divorced wife... (1888) The Pupil The Pupil is a short story by Henry James, first published in Longman's Magazine in 1891. It is the emotional story of a precocious young boy growing up in a mendacious and dishonorable family. He befriends his tutor, who is the only adult in his life that he can trust... (1891) Brooksmith "Brooksmith" is a short story written by Henry James in 1891. The story is also present in a compilation of 50 Great Short Stories by Milton Crane-Plot:... The Real Thing (story) "The Real Thing" is a short story by Henry James, first syndicated by S. S. McClure in multiple American newspapers and then published in the British publication Black and White in April 1892 and the following year as the title story in the collection, The Real Thing and Other Stories published by... (1892) The Middle Years (story) "The Middle Years" is a short story by Henry James, first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1893. It may be the most affecting and profound of James's stories about writers... (1893) The Death of the Lion -Plot summary:The narrator suggests writing an article on Neil Paraday; his new editor agrees. The former spends a week with Neil and writes the article whilst there, alongside reading Paraday's latest book. His editor rejects the article however; he decides to write an article for another... (1894) The Coxon Fund -Plot summary:At Wimbledon, outside London, the Mulvilles entertain with their guest Frank Saltram, a man “who had found out something” and they claim its everything; he poses as an intellectual when in fact he is a con man or perhaps a holy fool , conning the Mulvilles into paying his debts; the... (1894) The Next Time (short story) -Plot summary:Mrs Highmore asks the narrator to look through a book by Ralph Limbert which she deems artistic. The author works as a journalist for The Blackport Beacon to support his family. His attempts at writing trashy/journalistic pieces is to not avail, and he gets dismissed from his job for it... (1895) |
The Altar of the Dead "The Altar of the Dead" is a short story by Henry James, first published in his collection Terminations in 1895. A fable of literally life and death significance, the story explores how the protagonist tries to keep the remembrance of his dead friends, to save them from being forgotten entirely in... (1895) The Figure in the Carpet The Figure in the Carpet is a short story published in 1896 in London by American writer Henry James. The short story is usually referred to as a novella and is told from first person... (1896) The Turn of the Screw The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive... (1898) In the Cage "In the Cage" is also a song by progressive rock group Genesis off their 1974 album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.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... (1898) Europe (story) "Europe" is a short story by Henry James first published in Scribner's Magazine in June, 1899. In his preface to the story in the New York Edition of his fiction, James says he got one hint for this domestic tragicomedy from a visit to an elderly lady who largely lived in her recollections of an... (1899) The Real Right Thing The Real Right Thing is a short story written by Henry James and published in the late 19th century.-Plot Summary:The story begins with the mention of Ashton Doyne, a distinguished writer, who left his wife a widow. Mrs. Doyne decides to write a biography about her husband. Three months after the... Paste (story) "Paste" is a 5,800-word short story by Henry James first published in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly in December, 1899. James included the story in his collection, The Soft Side, published by Macmillan the following year... (1899) Mrs. Medwin Mrs. Medwin is a short story by Henry James, first published in Punch in 1900. The story slyly satirizes fashionable society in fin-de-siècle England. The central characters are an American brother and sister who both entertain and live off this society, which has grown bland and bored and almost... (1900) The Birthplace "The Birthplace" is a short story by Henry James, first published in his collection The Better Sort in 1903. A witty satire on the excesses of bardolatry, the story reflects James's skepticism about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays... (1903) The Beast in the Jungle The Beast in the Jungle is a 1903 novella by Henry James, first published as part of the collection, The Better Sort. Almost universally considered one of James' finest short narratives, this story treats appropriately universal themes: loneliness, fate, love and death... (1903) The Jolly Corner "The Jolly Corner" is a short story by Henry James published first in the magazine The English Review of December, 1908. One of James' most noted ghost stories, "The Jolly Corner" describes the adventures of Spencer Brydon as he prowls the now-empty New York house where he grew up.He encounters a... (1908) |
Other
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Theatricals Theatricals is a book of two plays by Henry James published in 1894. The plays, Tenants and Disengaged, had failed to be produced, so James put them out in book form with a rueful preface about his inability to get the plays onto the stage.... (1894) Theatricals: Second Series Theatricals: Second Series is a book of two plays by Henry James published in 1895. As a follow-up to his 1894 book Theatricals, James included two more unproduced plays in this volume, The Album and The Reprobate... (1895) 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 of James' attempt to conquer the theater... (1895) William Wetmore Story and His Friends William Wetmore Story and His Friends is a biography of sculptor William Wetmore Story by Henry James, published in 1903. James concentrated on the "friends" of the title, who included Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, James Russell Lowell, and other figures more prominent than Story... (1903) English Hours English Hours is a book of travel writing by Henry James published in 1905. The book collected various essays James had written on England over a period of more than thirty years, beginning in the 1870s. The essays had originally appeared in such periodicals as The Nation, The Century Magazine,... (1905) 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 Fortnightly Review in 1905 and 1906... (1907) 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 in 1907-1909, with a photogravure frontispiece for each volume by Alvin Langdon Coburn... (1907–1909), selected "definitive" edition of James's fiction |
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 essays to create a more consistent whole... (1909) 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 themes:... (1913) Notes on Novelists Notes on Novelists is a book of literary criticism by Henry James published in 1914. The book collected essays that James had written over the preceding two decades on French, Italian, English and American writers... (1914) 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 of his beloved cousin, Minny Temple, from... (1914) Notebooks of Henry James The Notebooks of Henry James are private notes made by the Anglo-American novelist and critic. Usually the notes are of a professional nature and concern ideas for possible or ongoing fictions, but there are a number of personal notes as well... (various, published posthumously) The Middle Years (book) The Middle Years is an incomplete book of autobiography by Henry James, posthumously published in 1917. The book covers the early years of James' residence in Europe and his meetings with writers such as George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, and James Russell Lowell.-Summary and themes:The seven chapters... (unfinished, published posthumously 1917) |
External links
- Works by Henry James at Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
(plain text and HTML editions) - Works by Henry James at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
(scanned illustrated first editions etc..) - The Henry James Scholar's Guide to Web Sites
- The Ladder—a Henry James Web Site at the Internet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
- Free Audiobook (An International Episode) from Librivox
- Henry James on Find-A-Grave
- Henry James Timeline
- Sheldon Novick's Henry James Page