​      About James...​​​
      ​Henry James was born on April 15, 1843 in new york city. He was the second child out of five kids. James was the son of the religious philosopher Henry James Sr. and a brother of the psychologist and philosopher William James. After three years at the scientific school,he enrolled as a medical student of the college in 1064. In 1867 he had undertaken the study of law of Harvard, in those days when Cambridge was almost completely rural. The law didn't grip him, and when he left Harvard at the end of the school year he was beginning to realize that he would become a full- time writer. He was one of his generations most well known writers. He lived in England for 40 years. He was married to a lady named Mary Robertson Walsh

                                                                Famous works...        ​

                                                                                  James published many important novels                                                                             called: The Wings of Dove, The Golden Bowl, and                                                                           Ambassador. When James was 38 as the volume                                                                           begins basking in the success of his first major novel,                                                                           The Portrait of a lady. James had  died from pneumonia                                                                           on February 28, 1916 in London. Henry James Sr. was

​                                                                       one of  the most wealthy ​ ​prolific  writer who wrote 20                                                                          novels, 112 stories and 12 plays, with many of his                                                                          stories centered around Americans who, like himself,                                                                           traveled and lived in Europe.

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timeline: ​

1843-1916

"I am that queer monster, the artist, an obstinate finality, an inexhaustible sensibility."

Birthplace​​

New York, US

​Education​

He was laxly educated by private tutors while he traveled with his family around Europe; attended Harvard law school but dropped his studies to concentrate on writing.

Did you know?​​

James's sexuality has been much discussed; he explained his celibacy by saying that "to be led to the marriage bed is to be dead".

​Critical verdict​​

He was the first to address the clash between old world and new, the theme of the American in Europe. His use of finely withheld detail and psychological ambiguity has had a great influence on twentieth-century fiction, while the enigma of his sexuality has assured plentiful analysis.

​Recommended works​​

The Turn of the Screw is timelessly unsettling; Portrait of a Lady an astoundingly complete character study.

Influences​​

While living in Paris he associated with Turgenev and Flaubert (though he once adjudged French literature "intolerably unclean"). He admired Emerson and George Eliot's comprehensive realism, and considered Balzac "the master of us all".

Adaptations​​

Cinematically the late 90s have seen a James revival, with Jane Campion's daring but flawed Portrait of a Lady starring Nicole Kid-man, a satisfying Wings of the Dove, and Washington Square (but check out the 1949 classic, The Heiress). A Merchant Ivory Golden Bowl is planned.

Recommended biography​​

He left an autobiographical fragment, Terminations; there is a vast, rather psychoanalytically dated biography by Leon Edel.

Criticism​​

The Cambridge Companion (ed Jonathan Freedman) provides an overview of James criticism throughout the century.

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