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Henry James


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Henry James (1843-1916), American-born writer, gifted with talents in literature, psychology, and philosophy. James wrote 20 novels, 112 stories, 12 plays and a number of works of literary criticism.

Henry James was born on April 15, 1843 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 German 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, 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' masterpieces are Daisy Miller (1879), where the young and innocent American, Daisy finds her values in conflict with European sophistication and The Portrait Of A Lady (1881) where again a young American woman becomes a victim of her provincialism during her travels in Europe. The Bostonians (1886) was set in the era of the rising feminist movement. What Maisie Knew (1897) depicted a preadolescent young girl, who must chose between her parents and a motherly old governess. In The Wings Of The Dove (1902) a heritage destroys the love of a young couple. James considered The Ambassadors (1903) his most 'perfect' work of art. James's most famous short story must be "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.

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 in 1915 he became a British citizen as a declaration of loyalty to his adopted country and in protest against the US's refusal to enter the war. James suffered a stroke on December 2, 1915. He died three months later in Rye on February 28, 1916.

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Recent Forum Posts on Henry James

The Jolly Corner

What is this story about? I have recently finnished reading The Jolly Corner, and I found it completely confusing, and only have some very vauge notion as to the meaning and purpose of this story. But I also found it dreadfully difficult to get through the thing. If anyone could offer any insight on the story it would be apperciated.

Posted By Dark Muse at Tue 6 May 2008, 4:12 PM in James, Henry || 2 Replies

An International Episode

I found this story to be rather charming and enjoyable, and one of the things which I always find amusing about such stories is the way in which some of the rather silly principles of the "society" are exposed. I particuarly the discourse between the English and the American's and how they precivie each other. And found it rather humorus how some things never seem to really change, as some of the ideas of Mrs. Westgate and the generalizations she made, seemed to be still a typical American viewpoint. I did find the ending a bit sad, and I was somewhat confused by the vaugeness of it. I presume at the end, Lord Lambeth, had gone at the end to prepost to Bessie and she refused him, and that is why they had to turn down the invitation to the castle and hurry away to Paris so suddenly. But I never understood her refusal of him. She seemed to be rather found of him. Was it becasue of the dissaproval of his family, that she suddenly made up her mind, or did she sincerely have no desire to marry him? Though I know she told her sister she did not, she still seemed to be rather attracted to him.

Posted By Dark Muse at Tue 1 Apr 2008, 5:12 PM in James, Henry || 1 Reply

Who did read Daisy Miller by Henry James?

Thanks alottttttttttttttttttttttttttttt fort ur help

Posted By natasssha at Sat 22 Mar 2008, 10:18 AM in James, Henry || 3 Replies

project help

Ive got a project due. Its not any time soon but i wanna get it done so i dont have to worry about it anymore. what do you guys think would be his favorite book? (not nessesarily one of his own) and his favorite music? my guess would be something sophisticated from england cuz he liked it there better than america but im not sure... any help or info about him that is more speculation than proven fact would be greatly appreciated. i have a bunch of questions about henry james that i cant find, even on international databases. (well one database) i need a bunch of random info for my project because it consists of a bunch of smaller projects and a huge essay. i can get all the basic stuff but you guys have read his books and could probably give me a good idea on stuff like personality. wait would i have to cite you as a source if i qouted info from you?

Posted By kyle3elyk at Wed 27 Feb 2008, 8:43 PM in James, Henry || 2 Replies

Why Should We Read Henry James?

I've read much good literature, but I've always read widely but not deep. For example, I'm well-read in American Literature, having read Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, Crane, Twain, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, Salinger, Bellow, and Roth. I've read most of the novels of the last three authors, but, of the others, I've read only two or three. I've also read a representative few of the so-called great books or classics, The Odyssey, Don Quixote, many of Shakespeare's plays, War and Peace, and Crime and Punishment. There are many gaps in my reading, Milton, for example, Jane Austin, and, to the point, Henry James. I always look forward to filling these gaps, but I find, when I do, sometimes I'm pleased and sometimes disappointed. Five years ago I read Stendahl's The Red and the Black with an on-line reading group. I thought it was one of the worst books I've ever read. How could it have been on so many lists of the world's great books? I felt the same reading Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. And, so do I feel having just completed Henry James' The American. I've sought out a James website to air my complaints. Frankly, I think The American is a terrible book. There isn't much of a plot, but then I'd heard not to expect much from James insofar as plot is concerned, the meat of his novels is in the interaction of his psychologically well-develeoped characters. Sorry, I didn't like his characters either. I did not care for any character in this book. The main character, Christopher Newman, who, I suppose, is not a bad guy, in many respects. He's made a lot of money, but he never cheated anyone or took unfair advantage. He has made his money honestly, but, in my estimation, he's a shallow character who doesn't inspire me, the reader, to identify with him. He shares the ethnic prejudices of his day ( "No Irish need apply." and "Conditions suitable for a white man." are propositions he believes in). He goes to Europe to "do the tourist thing." He wants to get married, but demands what we would call today a "trophy wife." I don't like him and, consequently, I can't share his disappointment when he's unfairly rebuffed in his attempts to "acquire" the aristocratic Madame de Cintre by her haughty older brother and her mean-spirited mother. And what about James' supposed psychological development of his characters? Newman certainly isn't very psychologically well-developed. He's fascinated by Madame de Cintre, but we don't get any insight as to why she is so appealing to him except for her pedigree and her "eyes." Newman makes no attempt in his courtship of her to find out who she really is. There is nothing going on during the several months that he courts her expect polite talk and social small talk. It is to Newman's credit that, in the end, when he could extract some vengence against the de Bellegardes, he doesn't, That, I suppose, is the point to the novel, but I found Newman so unsympathetic that I couldn't enjoy this small moral victory too much. If he had any sense in the first place and if he wasn't so blinded by his desire for his trophy, he should have known very early that the aristocratic de Bellegardes didn't want to have anything to do with him. I found his persistence somewhat laughable. So my question is why is Henry James considered as great as he is when, in this novel, at any rate, he gives us no plot and characters we don't care about? My only answer is that I probably shouldn't take this as a representative novel. It is any early one, I realiize. Maybe he got a lot better. If he wrote with a graceful style in this one, I could, possibly, see some hope. But that brings me to my third objection, the style of this novel is turgid. I can select any page at random and find an example: "He greeted her with high geniality and bade her come in and sit down and make herself comfortable. There is something which might have touched the springs both of mirth and of melancholy in the ancient maidenliness with which Mrs. Bread endeavored to comply with these directions." I don't know, but I would think that this and most of James' style would benefit from a good editor who would pare down his rhetoric. "He enthusiastically greeted her and asked her to come in and sit down and make herself comfortable. There was something both funny and sad at the way Mrs. Bread was unable to do so." I would like someone to convince me that I'm wrong and that Henry James is the great author so many have said he is.

Posted By C. R. at Wed 9 Jan 2008, 5:05 PM in James, Henry || 9 Replies

The Major Phase, my experience

I read the Ambassadors without knowing its obstacles. It was tough and I never fully appreciated it then. It was my first reading of what they so called James' late phase; I had no idea then what that meant. Subsequently I read the Wings of the Dove and the Golden Bowl; my admiration for James has grown steadily yet slowly. I came to know what he was all about and his peculiarities, but, he infuriates nonetheless. So I asked myself, why write like this? And why read this nonsense? I read the Portrait of a Lady with minimal effort (I wasn't acquainted with book reading at that time); there are moments in it of introspection but none like in the later novels. To answer my question, with the help of some helpful book intros, I read like a crazy martyr. There are times where I thought my nose will bleed. I felt like a failure. But everything came clearer when I put less into it. James wrote like this to confuse and, I guess and hope, that he didn't mean to be comprehensible (I mean those long passages of "whatever", as I called them). What I did was I let it all go, relaxed and didn't care if I wasn't getting it. I only did my best to work it all out after reading the final page; and somehow, it did make sense. I can safely say that the Golden Bowl impressed me most. Before reading it I knew what I'll be getting myself into. I sat down, I leaned back and read as if I was Alfred Hitchcock, I muttered F.U. whenever James is at "it" again. In the end the novel satisfied me more than I expected. I had this urge to reread the Ambassadors and the Wings of the Dove, but not now. I had to recuperate my sanity first.

Posted By Sir Bartholomew at Thu 27 Dec 2007, 8:46 PM in James, Henry || 8 Replies

Henry James

I'm reading "Washington Square" at the moment and I just can't put it out of my hands. I'm usually not a fast reader, but this one goes so smoothly. I looked Henry James on the net and saw that he has written many novels, this is just my first one(strangely he didn't like WS that much). So, witch one you recommand me to read next?

Posted By playeru at Fri 21 Sep 2007, 6:39 AM in James, Henry || 10 Replies

Daisy Miller-- why she came to such a bad end

Okay, so I wrote an essay in which I assert that Daisy Miller is merely a misunderstood young woman living in the wrong period and in the wrong society, and is therefore innocent. However, the professor gave me a B and claimed that I would have enhanced my presentation if I had explained why the author opted for such a tragic end for Daisy. Was he trying to teach readers that those who don't follow the rules of society come to a bad end because they don't have the capability to survive in such society? I really don't know.

Posted By philsopheperdue at Mon 7 May 2007, 2:46 PM in James, Henry || 17 Replies

Help needed to find a Henry james quote

Hi, I would appreciate any help with the below Henry James quote. I need the details of the source (title, date, page number) for an essay but forgot to source it at the time:redface: . ‘Experience is never limited and it is never complete…it is an immense sensibility, a kind of spiders web of the finest silken thread suspended in the chambers of consciousness and catching every airborne particle in its tissue…’ Thanks

Posted By daniel1 at Fri 4 May 2007, 5:20 AM in James, Henry || 9 Replies

Henry James and Poetry: A Personal Touch

PROSE-POETRY Since I began writing poetry seriously some 15 years ago(1992-2007) I have found that the line between prose and poetry is a fine one. The prose-poem is the primary poetry form of the twentieth century. This form allows me to blend the two forms into one whole. The following account from a journal called The Henry James Review1 helped me to reinforce what often feels like an artificial distinction between prose and poetry. I quote from parts of the article by one Philip Horne. “I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death,” said John Keats in 1818. Henry James never went so far as to utter such a thought and isn’t literally, bodily that is, among the poets. Since 1976, however, there has been a plaque commemorating him in Westminster Abbey on the floor of Poets’ Corner which he once called “the great temple of fame of the English race.” He is next to Gerard Manley Hopkins and T. S. Eliot and at kitty-corners to Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Where I shall be is a completely unknown quantity. In all likelihood my grave shall be marked as is my wish in my will; in all probability I will be buried in a cemetary in George Town or Launceston Tasmania. In the 1909 preface to The Golden Bowl Henry James speaks of the revising work of an author as the work of “a poet.” In case readers think he means only writers of verse, he makes clear “that the title poet is only a title of general application and convenience. It is intended for those who passionately cultivate the image of life and the art, on the whole so beneficial, of projecting it.” He goes on to say that the seer and the speaker under the descent of the god is the “poet,” whatever his form. He ceases to be a poet only when his form, whatever else it may nominally or superficially be, is unworthy of the god: in which event, we promptly submit, he isn’t worth talking of at all. James and his fellow-writers are, in other words, “seers,” speaking under the inspiration of a god who descends on them; and whether a writer’s form is “worthy,” James finally declares, depends not at all on “so minor a distinction, in the fields of light, as that between verse and prose.” The mere fact that James writes in prose, then, is to him no disqualification for the noble title of poet. If a writer’s “form” is “worthy”—which I think means if it projects the image of life with a sufficient intensity or complexity—if its language attains a “poetic” weight or power, then the writer can be called a poet. Edith Wharton tells us in her book A Backward Glance( Scribner’s, NY, 1964), “I never before heard poetry read as James read it; and I never have since. He chanted it and he was not afraid to chant it, as many good readers are, though they instinctively feel that the genius of the English poetical idiom requires it to be spoken as poetry. Many are afraid of yielding to their instinct for a special reading, a special production, of the poetry. The present-day fashion is to chatter high verse as though it were colloquial prose. James, on the contrary, far from shirking the rhythmic emphasis, gave it full expression. The stammer he had ceased as if by magic as soon as he began to read and his ear, so sensitive to the convolutions of an intricate prose style, never allowed him to falter over the most complex prosody. He was swept forward on great rollers of sound till the full weight of his voice fell on the last cadence. James’s reading was a thing apart, an emanation of his inmost self, unaffected by fashion or elocutionary artifice. He read from his soul and those who never heard him read poetry knew what that soul was. For James, poetry was about commemoration and a means of keeping a value, a person, a part of the past, alive. Poems, to James, came to play a part in people’s lives and they rendered a service. They came to be a stimulus and an inspiration. One of the functions of poetry, he argued, was to communicate and preserve complex feelings and ideas, to sustain and unify a civilization. The language of poetry at its greatest intensity was a dazzlingly economical medium: it could trigger a complex set of compressed associations and powerful responses. “There were descriptive phrases and touches in some poetry which represented an extraordinary accumulation of sentiment, a perfect entanglement of emotion. To James this was the key to a civilisation. James’ prose can be felt as “poetic” and it is in this sense that he belongs “among the poets.” –Philip Horne, Henry James Among the Poets, The Henry James Review, Winter 2005. It is some combination of a deep passivity-activity need in me that makes me want to go all the way, something to compensate for the gregarious theatrical side of life that drives me to this prose-poetry. –Ron Price 17 March 2007

Posted By Ron Price at Sat 17 Mar 2007, 6:09 AM in James, Henry || 1 Reply

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