Henry James

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.

Henry James
Biographical details
Birth date	April 15th 1843
Birth place	New York City
Death date	February 28th 1916
Death place	Chelsea, London
Relatives	Henry James, Sr. (father) William James (brother) Alice James (sister)
Authorial details
First work	A Tragedy of Error
Last work	Notes of a Son and Brother (?)
Notable works	The Turn of the Screw The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James (1843-1916) was an author. One of the better-known authors of the late 19th century (with Graham Greene claiming that he was the Shakespeare of novelists), James is largely remembered for his ghost story The Turn of the Screw.

Life

Born in New York in the April of 1843, he was the son of a lecturer/philosopher and his wife (who came from a wealthy family). He was the younger brother of William James (a future pioneer within philosophy) along with the older brother of Alice James (a future diarist) and two boys. When Henry was an infant, Henry's father moved the family to England. This move lasted for only a year, and Henry spent most of his childhood in New York.

Henry's father tried to educate him in scientific and philosophical teachings. In Henry's teenage years, the Jameses moved throughout Europe - mainly in France, leading to James gaining an understanding of the French language. His father recorded that Henry was a voracious reader as a teen - claiming that he was a "devourer of libraries".

After returning to America - specifically Newport - in 1860, Henry met and befriended future literary critic Thomas Sergeant Perry and artist John La Farge (who introduced Henry to the works of Honore de Balzac). The next year, Henry visited wounded Union soldiers and injured his back while fighting a fire - making him unfit to serve in the Civil War while his younger brothers entered into the Army.

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Writing style

Many of James' works deal with American tourists in Europe (such as The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and the novella Daisy Miller) along with American high society.

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Notable works

Novels

• Roderick Hudson - a bildungsroman and James' first novel.
• The American - described by Wikipedia as "an uneasy combination of social comedy and melodrama".
• The Europeans - a novel about Europeans travelling to America.
• Washington Square - a novel about a father attempting to break up a romance between his daughter and a man who is seemingly only after money.
• The Portrait of a Lady - one of James' most well-known works, which serves to highlight the differences between the "Old World" and the "New World".
• The Princess Casamassima - one of James' more violent novels, about a bookbinder who becomes a terrorist.
• The Bostonians - a " bittersweet tragicomedy" and a "satire of the women’s rights movement".
• The Tragic Muse - a "wide, cheerful panorama of English life".
• The Old Things (or The Spoils of Poynton) - a novel about an old woman fighting to keep her house.
• What Maisie Knew - a novel about the daughter of two childish and divorced parents.
• The Awkward Age - a novel that, in its writing, expanded from a simple tale into a sprawling critique of English society.
• The Sacred Fount - a rare first-person novel and one of his more forgotten works.
• The Wings of the Dove - a novel about a woman stricken with a deadly illness.
• The Ambassadors - a darkly comedic novel about an American traveling to Europe to bring his son back.
• The Golden Bowl - a "complex, intense study of marriage and adultery" that is supposedly the final novel of James' "major phase".

Novellas

• A Landscape Painter - a novella taking the form of a diary.
• Daisy Miller - a short novella about two American tourists meeting in Switzerland.
• An International Episode - a novella which tackles culture clashes between Europe and America.
• The Aspern Papers - a suspenseful tale about the letters of Percy Shelley.
• The Figure in the Carpet - a novella (sometimes classed as a short story) about an obsessive fan.
• The Turn of the Screw - one of James' most well-remembered works, about a nanny visiting a mysterious house.
• The Beast in the Jungle - a novella about a man stricken by the belief that a catastrophe is waiting for him.

Short stories

• The Jolly Corner - a short ghost story.

Appearances in fiction

• In Dan Simmons' Sherlock Holmes novel The Fifth Heart, Henry James is a major character - accompanying the detective.

See also

• Thomas Hardy
• Edith Wharton
• Theodore Dreiser
• Louis Auchincloss
• Gustave Flaubert
• Joseph Conrad

Sources

• Wikipedia