Henry James: A Life in Letters - Hardcover

James, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670885630 ISBN 13: 9780670885633

Publisher: Viking Pr, 1999

Synopsis

Presents the noted author's views on literary craft, sex, politics, and friendship in his letters to such correspondents as William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, Henry Adams, Robert Louis Stevenison, and H.G. Wells

About this title

From the Publisher

This fully annotated selection from Henry James's eloquent correspondence follows him across America, Britain and continental Europe, and offers us a broad and fascinating panorama of an age of transition, when the foundations of our own world were being laid down. Philip Horne has spent over a decade looking at the thousands of letters in archives in America and England and half of those here have never before been published.

About the Author

Henry James (1843-1916), born in New York City, was the son of noted religious philosopher Henry James, Sr., and brother of eminent psychologist and philosopher William James. He spent his early life in America and studied in Geneva, London and Paris during his adolescence to gain the worldly experience so prized by his father. He lived in Newport, went briefly to Harvard Law School, and in 1864 began to contribute both criticism and tales to magazines.

In 1869, and then in 1872-74, he paid visits to Europe and began his first novel, Roderick Hudson. Late in 1875 he settled in Paris, where he met Turgenev, Flaubert, and Zola, and wrote The American (1877). In December 1876 he moved to London, where two years later he achieved international fame with Daisy Miller. Other famous works include Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Princess Casamassima (1886), The Aspern Papers (1888), The Turn of the Screw (1898), and three large novels of the new century, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904). In 1905 he revisited the United States and wrote The American Scene (1907).

During his career he also wrote many works of criticism and travel. Although old and ailing, he threw himself into war work in 1914, and in 1915, a few months before his death, he became a British subject. In 1916 King George V conferred the Order of Merit on him. He died in London in February 1916.

Philip Horne has spent a decade looking at the thousands of James's letters in archives in the United States and Europe. A Reader in English Literature at University College, London, he is the author of Henry James and Revision and the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of James's The Tragic Muse.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0670885630
• ISBN 13: 9780670885633
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 667