Henry James

Henry James was an American novelist and critic. During his lifetime he wrote 20 novels, 112 tales, and 12 plays in addition to several volumes of travel writing and criticism. Today he is best remembered as the author of the novel The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and the novella The Turn of the Screw (1898).

Henry James was born on April 15, 1843, in New York City. James was a well-traveled youth. As a teenager, he visited Geneva, Paris, and London. Just before the American Civil War, the James family moved to New England. Before pursuing a career as a writer, James briefly attended Harvard Law School.

Henry James’s first short story, “A Tragedy of Error,” was published anonymously in The Continental Monthly in 1864. Shortly thereafter James befriended William Dean Howells, editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Howells published him regularly, and by his mid-20s James was widely considered one of the most skillful writers of short stories in America.

Henry James was a key transitional figure between literary realism and Modernism. James was interested in human behaviour and the inner workings of the mind. In his novels, he employed Modernist techniques such as stream-of-consciousness narration to explore the psychology of his characters, focusing in particular on the effect of external events on individual consciousness.

Henry James was one of the most prolific writers of the 19th century. His most famous works included The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), and The Ambassadors (1903). Many of his tales, including “The Figure in the Carpet” (1896) and The Turn of the Screw (1898), are still widely read.

Henry James spent the last several years of his life in Great Britain. In protest of U.S. neutrality in World War I, James resigned his U.S. citizenship and became a British subject in 1915. He died of pneumonia on February 28, 1916, a year before the United States entered the war.