From Wikipedia
Henry James, O.M. (April 15, 1843–February
28, 1916) was an Anglo-American 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 spent the last 40 years of his life in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death.
He is primarily known for a 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
and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting.
James
contributed significantly to the criticism of fiction, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the greatest
possible freedom in presenting their view of the world. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and possibly
unreliable narrators in his own novels and tales brought a new depth and interest to narrative fiction. An extraordinarily
productive writer, in addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books of travel, biography, autobiography,
and criticism, 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.
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-nineteenth-century America. In
his youth James traveled 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 School, but preferred reading literature to studying law. James
published his first short story, A Tragedy of Errors two years later, and devoted himself to literature. In 1866–69
and 1871–72 he was a contributor to The Nation and Atlantic Monthly.
From an early age James had read the classics of English, American, French and G
erman literature and Russian classics in translation. His first novel, Watch and Ward (1871), was written while he
was traveling through Venice and Paris. After living in Paris, where he was contributor to the New York Tribune, 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 (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 (1881), in which once again a young American woman becomes a victim of her provincialism during her travels in Europe.
The Bostonians (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 (1902) an inheritance destroys
the love of a young couple. James considered The Ambassadors (1903) his most "perfect" work of art. James's most
famous short story is The Turn of the Screw, 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.
Grave
marking Henry James in Cambridge Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Between 1906 and 1910 James revised many of his tales and novels for the New York edition
of his complete works. His autobiography, A Small Boy And Others, appeared in 1913 and was continued in Notes Of A Son And
Brother (1914). The third volume, The Middle Years, appeared posthumously in 1917. The outbreak of World War I was a shock
for James, and on July 26, 1915 he became a British citizen as a declaration of loyalty to his adopted country and in protest
against the America's refusal to enter the war. James suffered a stroke on December 2, 1915, and died in London on February
28, 1916. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and his ashes are interred at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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, criticized, and learned from the classics of English,
American, French, Italian, German and (in translation) Russian literature. In 1863, he anonymously published his first short
story, A Tragedy of Error. 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.
Until late in
life his novels were serialized in magazines before book publication, and he wrote the monthly installments 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 theater, 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, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Honoré de Balzac, and Ivan Turgenev 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 emphasize his continuing ties to the
city of his birth. In his essay The Art of Fiction, and in prefaces to each volume of The New York Edition, James explained
his views of the art of fiction, emphasizing 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[4] and a dramatization of his popular novella Daisy Miller 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 dramatization 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, which Alexander produced. There was a noisy uproar on the opening night, January 5, 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 good reviews, and had a modest run of five weeks and was then taken off to make way for Oscar Wilde's The
Importance of Being Earnest, 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 theater, 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 May 6, 1910 plunged London
into mourning and the theaters were closed. Discouraged by failing health and the stresses of theatrical work, James did not
renew his efforts in the theater, but recycled his plays as successful novels. The Outcry 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 theater, 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 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, 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 for him to sustain, he returned to the writing
of long, serialized 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 traumatized 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 theater]. . . he felt a resurgence of new energy."[7]
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, 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 agonized sense that his deeply felt American nationality
was threatened by these upheavals.
James at sixteen years old
James never married, and after settling in London proclaimed
himself "a bachelor" and regularly rejected suggestions that he marry. After his death, critics speculated on the
cause of his bachelorhood. F. W. Dupee, in several well-regarded volumes on the James family, originated the theory that James
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 images in
the Louvre, to exemplify James's romanticism about Europe, a Napoleonic fantasy into which he fled.[8] This analysis seemed
to support literary critics like Van Wyck Brooks and Vernon Parrington who had condemned James's expatriation, and who criticized
his work as effeminate and deracinated. Leon Edel used it as the premise of his own masterly biography, which held the field
for many years. Dupee had not been given access to the James family papers, however, and had worked principally from James's
published memoir of his older brother, and the limited collection of letters edited by Percy Lubbock, which was heavily weighted
toward James's last years. Dupee's account, perhaps as a result, portrayed James as a man moving directly from childhood,
when he trailed after his older brother, to an 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. As author Terry Eagleton has stated, "...gay critics debate exactly how repressed his (probable)
homosexuality was..."
James's letters to expatriate American sculptor Hendrik Christian
Andersen 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 May 6, 1904 to his brother William, James referred to himself
as "always your hopelessly celibate even though sexagenarian Henry".
How
accurate that description might have been is the subject of contention among James's biographers, 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, James could write: "I repeat, almost to indiscretion, that I could live with you. Meanwhile I
can only try to live without you," and it is only in letters to young gay men that James refers to himself as their "lover".
James wrote to young men who are now thought to have been homosexual or bisexual, who made up a large fraction of his close
male friends. In a letter to Howard Sturgis, following a long visit, James refers jocularly to their "happy little congress
of two".
In letters to Hugh Walpole, James pursues involved 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". The privately printed letters to Walter Berry have long been celebrated for
their lightly veiled eroticism.
However, James wrote to fellow-novelist Lucy Clifford: "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." In
another example he wrote 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, 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 biography and play
a central role in a study by Lyndall Gordon. Edel conjectured that Woolson was in love with James and killed herself in part
because of his coldness. Gordon builds on Edel's account and adds her own speculation that James felt guilt at having sabotaged
Woolson's work. Woolson's biographers have strongly objected to Edel's account, however,, and have generally portrayed James
as a friend who advanced Woolson's career. Novick in his more recent account argues that the available evidence shows that
James suffered strong emotions prompted by the apparent suicide of a friend and colleague, but that there is no evidence Woolson
was in love with him or that he was the cause of her death
[
James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature.
His works frequently juxtapose characters from the Old World (Europe), embodying a feudal civilization that is beautiful,
often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World (United States), where people are often brash, open, and assertive 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:
When he walked out of the refuge of his study and into the
world and looked around him, he saw a place of torment, where creatures of prey perpetually thrust their claws into the quivering
flesh of doomed, defenseless children of light… His novels are a repeated exposure of this wickedness, a reiterated
and passionate plea for the fullest freedom of development, unimperiled by reckless and barbarous stupidity.
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, his style was simple and direct (by the standards of Victorian
magazine writing) and he experimented widely with forms and methods, generally narrating from a conventionally omniscient
point of view. Plots generally concern romance, except for the three big novels of social commentary that conclude this period.
In the second period, as noted above, he abandoned the serialized novel and from 1890 to about 1897, he
wrote short stories and plays. Finally, in his third and last period he returned to the long, serialized novel. Beginning
in the second period, but most noticeably in the third, he increasingly abandoned direct statement in favor 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.
Then and later
many readers find the late style difficult and unnecessary; his friend Edith Wharton, 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 characterization,
while his shorter late fiction, such as The Turn of the Screw, is considered highly accessible and remains popular with readers.
More important for his work overall may have been his position as an expatriate, 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,
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 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: One would be in a position to appreciate James better if one compared
him with the dramatists of the seventeenth century—Racine and Molière, whom he resembles in form as well as in
point of view, and even Shakespeare, when allowances are made for the most extreme differences in subject and form. These
poets are not, like Dickens and Hardy, writers of melodrama — either humorous or pessimistic, nor secretaries of society
like Balzac, nor prophets like Tolstoy: they are occupied simply with the presentation of conflicts of moral character, which
they do not concern themselves about softening or averting. They do not indict society for these situations: they regard them
as universal and inevitable. They do not even blame God for allowing them: they accept them as the conditions of life
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", in which the protagonist
and a ghost-doppelganger live alternate American and European lives; and in others, like The Ambassadors, an older James seems
fondly to regard his own younger self facing a crucial moment
Although any selection of James's novels
as "major" must inevitably depend to some extent on personal preference, the following books have achieved prominence
among his works in the views of many critics
The first period of James's fiction, usually considered
to have culminated in The Portrait of a Lady, concentrated on the contrast between Europe and America. The style of these
novels is generally straightforward and, though personally characteristic, well within the norms of 19th century fiction.
Roderick Hudson (1875) is a Künstlerroman 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 favorable comment due to the vivid realization 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 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.
James wrote Washington Square (1880), a deceptively simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict
between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, domineering father. The book is often compared to Jane Austen'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 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 more popular works in the entire Jamesian canon.[citation needed]
In The Portrait of a Lady (1881) James concluded the first phase of his career with a novel
that remains his most popular 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 not just a reflection
of James's absorbing interest in the differences between the New World and the Old, but covers themes of personal freedom,
moral responsibility, betrayal, and sexuality.
In the 1880s James wrote The Bostonians (1886), a bittersweet
tragicomedy that centers on: Basil Ransom, an unbending political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's
cousin and a zealous Boston feminist; and Verena Tarrant, a pretty protégée of Olive's in the feminist movement.
The story line 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 (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 (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 theater 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 (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 (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.
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
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 (1902) that was the first published. This novel tells the story of
Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her impact on the people around her. Some of these
people befriend Milly with honorable 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 (1903), is a dark comedy that follows the trip of protagonist
Lewis Lambert Strether 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 text of the novel, James placed this book at the top
of his achievements, which has occasioned some critical disagreement. The Golden Bowl (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.
Lamb House in Rye, East Sussex, where James lived from 1897
James was particularly interested in what he called the "beautiful and blest nouvelle",
or the longer form of short narrative. Still, he produced a number of very short stories in which he achieved notable compression
of sometimes complex subjects. The following narratives are representative of James's achievement in the shorter forms of
fiction.
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" (1871),
the earliest fiction that James included in the New York Edition, the difference between America and Europe erupts into open
conflict, which leads to a sadly ironic 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" (1878). This story portrays
the confused courtship 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"
(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 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" (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", first published in James's collection Terminations in 1895 after the story failed
of magazine publication, is 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 the rush of everyday events. He
meets a woman who shares his ideals, only to find that the past 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 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" (1898) is a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and
film adaptation. With its possibly ambiguous content and powerful narrative technique, the story challenges the reader to
determine if the protagonist, an unnamed governess, is correctly reporting events or is instead an unreliable neurotic with
an overheated imagination. 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" (1903) is almost
universally considered to be one of James's finest short narratives, and has often been compared with The Ambassadors in its
meditation on experience or the lack of it. The story also treats other universal themes: loneliness, fate, 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" (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".
Beyond his fiction, James was one of the more important literary
critics in the history of the novel. In his classic essay The Art of Fiction (1884), he argued against rigid 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 of his American predecessor Nathaniel Hawthorne. When he assembled the New York
Edition 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
For most of his life James harbored
ambitions for success as a playwright. He converted his novel The American into a play that enjoyed modest returns in the
early 1890s. In all he wrote about a dozen plays, most of which went unproduced. His costume drama Guy Domville failed disastrously
on its opening night in 1895. James then largely abandoned his efforts to conquer the stage and returned to his fiction.
In his Notebooks he maintained that his theatrical experiment benefited his novels and tales by helping him dramatize
his characters' thoughts and emotions. James produced a small but valuable amount of theatrical criticism, including perceptive
appreciations of Henrik Ibsen.
With his wide-ranging artistic interests, James occasionally wrote
on the visual arts. Perhaps his most valuable contribution was his favorable assessment of fellow expatriate John Singer Sargent,
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 (an example
of the charming approach) and The American Scene (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, Edith Wharton and Joseph Conrad, 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, Notes of a Son and Brother, and the unfinished The Middle Years. These books portray the development
of a classic observer who was passionately interested in artistic creation but was somewhat reticent about participating fully
in the life around him
Henry James was only twenty-two when
he wrote The Noble School of Fiction for The Nation's first issue in 1865. He wrote, in all, over two hundred essays and book,
art and theater reviews for the magazine
James's
work has remained steadily popular with the limited audience of educated readers to whom he spoke during his lifetime, and
remained firmly in the British canon, but after his death American critics, such as Van Wyck Brooks, expressed hostility towards
James's long expatriation and eventual naturalization as a British citizen.
Other critics
like E.M. Forster complained about what they saw as James's squeamishness in the treatment of sex and other possibly controversial
material, or dismissed his style as difficult and obscure, relying heavily on extremely long sentences and excessively latinate
language.[39] Vernon Parrington, composing a canon of American literature, condemned James for having cut himself off from
America. Although these criticisms have by no means abated completely, James is now widely valued for his psychological and
moral realism, his masterful creation of character, his low-key but playful humor, and his assured command of the language.
In his 1983 book, The Novels of Henry James, Edward Wagenknecht offers an assessment that echoes Theodora Bosanquet's:
"To be completely great," Henry
James wrote in an early review, "a work of art must lift up the heart," and his own novels do this to an outstanding
degree… More than sixty years after his death, the great novelist who sometimes professed to have no opinions stands
foursquare in the great Christian humanistic and democratic tradition. The men and women who, at the height of World War II,
raided the secondhand shops for his out-of-print books knew what they were about. For no writer ever raised a braver banner
to which all who love freedom might adhere.
Early biographies of James echoed the unflattering picture
of him drawn in early criticism. F.W. Dupee, as noted above, characterized 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'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 used an extensive list of biographies of Henry James and his family for his widely admired
2004 novel, The Master, 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, a novel by David Lodge published in the same year,
was based on James's efforts to conquer the stage in the 1890s. In 2002 Emma Tennant published Felony: The Private History
of The Aspern Papers, a novel that fictionalized the relationship between James and American novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson
and the possible effects of that relationship on The Aspern Papers.
The published criticism of James's work has reached enormous proportions. The volume of criticism of The Turn of
the Screw alone has become extremely large for such a brief work. The Henry James Review, 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.
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 Ivory: The Europeans (1978),
The Bostonians (1984) and The Golden Bowl (2000). The Iain Softley-directed version of The Wings of the Dove (1997) was successful
with both critics and audiences. Helena Bonham Carter received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for her memorable
portrayal of Kate Croy. Agnieszka Holland's Washington Square (1997) was well received by critics, and Jane Campion tried
her hand with The Portrait of a Lady (1996) but with much less success. In earlier times Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961)
brought The Turn of the Screw to vivid life on film, and William Wyler's The Heiress (1949), adapted from Washington Square,
won four Academy Awards, including a Best Actress award for 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. 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
Such disparate writers as Joyce Carol Oates with Accursed Inhabitants
of the House of Bly (1994), Louis Auchincloss with The Ambassadress (1950), Tom Stoppard with The Real Thing (1982), and Alan
Hollinghurst with The Line of Beauty (2004) were explicitly influenced by James's works. James was definitely out of his element
when it came to music, but Benjamin Britten's operatic version of "The Turn of the Screw" (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 wrote an emotional letter where 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" is striking. And there are the real
oddities, like the Rolls-Royce ad which used Strether's famous words: "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to."
That's more than a little ironic, considering The Ambassadors' sardonic treatment of the "great new force" of advertising
