Henry James, Life and Works
Classic Author, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Playwright, Critic
Biography of classic author and prolific writer Henry James, best known for his complex characters and morality themes.
Henry James is a American-born English author of novels, short-stories, plays and literary criticisms. Some of his greatest novels include: The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl. Famous stories he wrote: Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians.Among the authors he considered his great influence include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Guy de Maupassant and Ivan Turgenev.
Early Life
Henry James (1843-1916), was born in New York city into a wealthy and prominent family. His father Henry James, Sr. was a well-known theological writer and lecturer, his brother William James, a pioneer psychologist and philosopher, and her sister Alice James, a diarist. The family moved frequently. As a roving youth who lived in France, Germany, England, and Switzerland, he met Turgenev and Flaubert in Europe.
He enrolled in the Harvard Law School but preferred reading literature to studying law. He published his first story, 'A Passionate Pilgrim' and became a brilliant reviewer and contributor for literary journals. Only in his 20s then, he was considered one of America's finest short-story writers.
The Writer in Europe
James settled in Europe in 1875, the same year he wrote his first book Roderick Hudson. During his first years there, he wrote novels that portrayed Americans living in Europe. He was concerned with exploring the relationship between European and American cultures. The Portrait of a Lady (1881), one of his best stories from this period, is about a young American woman who visits England and Italy with her aunt. In the 1880s, he began analysing social ills in novels such as The Bostonians and Princess Casamassima (1886) in which he probes the aspects of European political life.
Last Years
The final stage of James's writing was devoted to combining the previous themes by analyzing morality questions through the experiences of individuals. It was in this period that he published his three greatest novels: The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl.
James made England his home primarily in London and Rye, Sussex, and becoming a British citizen in 1915. At Rye, James became friends with H.G. Wells, the pioneer writer of science fiction and self-conscious reformer. The friendship turned sour when Wells attacked the Jamesian ethos in the novel Boon (1915).
He wrote his last three novels in Rye, Sussex. He received the Order of Merit the day he died, aged 72.
Books by Henry James:
- Watch and Ward, 1871
- Roderick Hudson, 1875
- The American, 1877
- Daisy Miller, 1879
- Washington Square, 1880
- The Portrait of a Lady, 1881
- The Bostonians, 1886
- The Princess Casamassima, 1886
- The Tragic Muse, 1890
- The Sacred Fount, 1901
- The Wings of the Dove, 1902
- The Ambassadors, 1903
- The Golden Bowl, 1904
Sources:
Larousse Dictionary of Writers, ed. by Rosemary Goring (1994)
The A-Z of Great Writers by Tom Payne (1997)
