View source for Henry James

{{Short description|American and British writer (1843–1916)}}
{{Other people}}
{{Multiple issues|
{{Further reading|date= August 2025}}
{{External links|date= August 2025}}
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{{Use British English|date=September 2024}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2024}}
{{Infobox writer
| name             = Henry James
| honorific_suffix = {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|OM|size=100%}}
| image            = Henry James by John Singer Sargent cleaned.jpg
| alt              = 
| caption          = ''[[Portrait of Henry James]]'' by [[John Singer Sargent]], 1913
| pseudonym        = 
| birth_name       = 
| birth_date       = {{Birth date|df=yes|1843|4|15}}
| birth_place      = [[New York City| New York, New York (state)]], U.S.
| death_date       = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1916|2|28|1843|4|15}}
| death_place      = [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]], London, England
| occupation       = Writer
| citizenship      = American (1843–1915)<br />British (1915–1916)
| education        = 
| alma_mater       = [[Harvard University]]
| period           = 1863–1916
| genre            = 
| subject          = 
| movement         = 
| notableworks     = {{Plainlist|
* ''[[Roderick Hudson]]'' (1875)
* ''[[The American (novel)|The American]]'' (1877)
* ''[[Daisy Miller]]'' (1879)
* ''[[Washington Square (novel)|Washington Square]]'' (1880)
* ''[[The Portrait of a Lady]]'' (1881)
* ''[[The Bostonians]]'' (1886)
* ''[[The Aspern Papers]]'' (1888)
* ''[[What Maisie Knew]]'' (1897)
* ''[[The Turn of the Screw]]'' (1898)
* ''[[The Wings of the Dove]]'' (1902)
* ''[[The Ambassadors]]'' (1903)
* ''[[The Golden Bowl]]'' (1904)
}}
| spouse           = 
| partner          = 
| children         = 
| relatives        = {{Plainlist|
* [[Henry James Sr.]] (father)
* [[William James]] (brother)
* [[Alice James]] (sister)
}}
| awards           = 
| signature        = Henry James signature (1907).png
| signature_alt    = 
| website          = 
| portaldisp       = 
}}

'''Henry James''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OM}} ({{Birth date|df=yes|1843|4|15}} – {{Death date|df=yes|1916|2|28}}) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between [[literary realism]] and [[literary modernism]], and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of theologian [[Henry James Sr.]] and the brother of [[Philosophy|philosopher]] and [[psychologist]] [[William James]] and [[diarist]] [[Alice James]].

He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as ''[[The Portrait of a Lady]]''. His later works, such as ''[[The Ambassadors]]'', ''[[The Wings of the Dove]]'' and ''[[The Golden Bowl]]'' were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to [[Impressionism|Impressionist painting]].<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44375939 | jstor=44375939 | title=Henry James and Impressionist Painting | last1=Wolf | first1=Jack C. | journal=CEA Critic | date=1976 | volume=38 | issue=3 | pages=14–16 }}</ref>

His novella ''[[The Turn of the Screw]]'' has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous [[ghost story]] in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "[[The Jolly Corner]]".

James published articles and books of criticism, [[travel writing|travel]], biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, he spent much of his life abroad. James largely relocated to Europe in his thirties, and eventually settled in England, becoming a [[British citizen]] in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] in 1911, 1912, and 1916.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=4537|title=Nomination Database|website=nobelprize.org|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170716115207/https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=4537|archive-date=16 July 2017}}</ref> [[Jorge Luis Borges]] said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated [[Kafka]], [[Herman Melville|Melville]], and [[Léon Bloy|Bloy]]; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Henry James – Library of America |url=https://www.loa.org/writers/223-henry-james |access-date=7 April 2023 |website=loa.org}}</ref>

==Life==
===Early years, 1843–1883===
[[File:Henry James Sr. and Henry James Jr. in 1854.jpg|thumb|Henry James, age 11, with his father, [[Henry James Sr.]] – 1854 [[daguerreotype]] by [[Mathew Brady]]]]

James was born at 21 Washington Place (facing [[Washington Square Park|Washington Square]]) in New York City on 15 April 1843. His parents were Mary Walsh and Henry James Sr. His father was intelligent and steadfastly congenial. He was a lecturer and philosopher who had inherited independent means from his father, William James, a farmer from Corkish, County Cavan, Ireland,<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.anglocelt.ie/2010/07/08/bailieborough-400-celebrations-continue-with-henry-james-events/ | title=Bailieborough 400 celebrations continue with Henry James events | date=8 July 2010 }}</ref> who had emigrated to [[Albany, New York|Albany]] and became the second richest man in the state after [[John Jacob Astor]] through banking and real estate. Mary came from a wealthy family long settled in New York City. Her sister Katherine lived with her adult family for an extended period of time. Henry Jr. was one of four boys, the others being [[William James|William]], who was one year his senior, and younger brothers Wilkinson ([[Wilkie James|Wilkie]]) and Robertson. His younger sister was [[Alice James|Alice]]. Both of his parents were of Irish and Scottish descent.<ref>Kaplan, Fred. ''Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, A Biography''. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. {{ISBN?}}</ref>

Before he was a year old, his father sold the house at Washington Place and took the family to Europe, where they lived for a time in a cottage in [[Windsor Great Park]] in England. The family returned to New York in 1845, and Henry spent much of his childhood living between his paternal grandmother's home in Albany and a house on 58 West [[14th Street (Manhattan)|Fourteenth Street]] in Manhattan.<ref>{{cite book| title=Henry James Letters Vol. 1: 1843–1875| author=Leon Edel| publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University| year=1974| pages=3–4}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=89}}</ref> A painting of a view of Florence by Thomas Cole hung in the front parlor of this house on West Fourteenth.<ref name=":1" /> His education was calculated by his father to expose him to many influences, primarily scientific and philosophical; it was described by Percy Lubbock, the editor of his selected letters, as "extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous."<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=3VQ-AQAAIAAJ ''Letters of William James'', p. 3]</ref> Once, a cousin of the James family came down to the house in Fourteenth Street and, one evening during his stay, read the first installment of ''[[David Copperfield]]'' aloud to the elders of the family: Henry Junior had sneaked down from his bedroom to listen surreptitiously to the reading, until a scene involving the Murdstones led him to "loud[ly] sob," whereupon he was discovered and sent back to bed.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=98}}</ref>

Between 1855 and 1860, the James household travelled to London, Paris, [[Geneva]], [[Boulogne-sur-Mer]], [[Bonn]], and [[Newport, Rhode Island]], according to the father's current interests and publishing ventures, retreating to the United States when funds were low.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=119–157}}</ref> The James family arrived in Paris in July 1855 and took rooms at a hotel in the Rue de la Paix.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=120}}</ref> Some time between 1856 and 1857, when William was fourteen and Henry thirteen, the two brothers visited the Louvre and the Luxembourg Palace.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=157}}</ref> Henry studied primarily with tutors, and briefly attended schools while the family travelled in Europe. A tutor of the James children in Paris, M. Lerambert, had written a volume of verse that was well reviewed by Sainte-Beuve.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=128}}</ref> Their longest stays were in France, where Henry began to feel at home and became fluent in French.<ref name=":0" /> He had a stutter, which seems to have manifested itself only when he spoke English; in French, he did not stutter.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://labos.ulg.ac.be/cipa/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2015/07/18_campbell.pdf|title=The Man Who Talked Like a Book, Wrote Like He Spoke|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171228172702/http://labos.ulg.ac.be/cipa/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2015/07/18_campbell.pdf|archive-date=28 December 2017|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Henry James at age16.JPG|thumb|left|120px|James, age 16]]

In the summer of 1857, the James family went to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where they set up house at No. 20 Rue Neuve Chaussée, and where Henry was a regular customer at an English lending library.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=132}}</ref> In the autumn of that year, Henry Senior wrote from Boulogne to a friend that "Henry is not so fond of study, properly so-called, as of reading...He is a devourer of libraries, and an immense writer of novels and dramas. He has considerable talent as a writer, but I am at a loss to know whether he will ever accomplish much."<ref name=":2" /> William recorded in a letter to their parents in Paris, while the boys were staying in Bonn, that Henry and Garth Wilkinson would wrestle "when study has made them dull and sleepy."<ref name=":0" />

In 1860, the family returned to Newport in the United States. There, Henry befriended [[Thomas Sergeant Perry]], who was to become a celebrated literary academic in adulthood, and painter [[John La Farge]], for whom Henry sat as a subject, and who introduced him to French literature, and in particular, to [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Leon |first=Edel |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=163}}</ref> James later called Balzac his "greatest master", and said that he had learned more about the craft of fiction from him than from anyone else.<ref name="Powers 1970, p. 11">{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=11}}</ref>

In July 1861, Henry and Thomas Sergeant Perry paid a visit to an encampment of wounded and invalid Union soldiers on the Rhode Island shore, at [[Melville, Rhode Island|Portsmouth Grove]]; he took walks and had conversations with numerous soldiers and in later years compared this experience to those of [[Walt Whitman]] as a volunteer nurse.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=169–170}}</ref> In the autumn of 1861, James received an injury, probably to his back, while fighting a fire. This injury, which resurfaced at times throughout his life, made him unfit for military service in the American Civil War.<ref name="Powers 1970, p. 11"/> His younger brothers Garth Wilkinson and Robertson, however, both served, with Wilkinson serving as an officer in the [[54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment|54th Massachusetts]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=185}}</ref>

In 1864, the James family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to be near William, who had enrolled first in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard and then in the medical school. In 1862, Henry attended [[Harvard Law School]], but realised that he was not interested in studying law. He pursued his interest in literature and associated with authors and critics [[William Dean Howells]] and [[Charles Eliot Norton]] in Boston and Cambridge and formed lifelong friendships with [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.]], the future Supreme Court justice, and with [[James T. Fields]] and [[Annie Adams Fields]], his first professional mentors. In 1865, [[Louisa May Alcott]] visited Boston and dined with the James family; she later wrote in her journals that "Henry Jr....was very friendly. Being a literary youth he gave me advice, as if he had been eighty, and I a girl."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=213}}</ref>

His first published work was a review of a stage performance, "Miss Maggie Mitchell in ''Fanchon the Cricket''", published in 1863.<ref>{{harvp|Novick|1996|p=431}}</ref> About a year later, "[[A Tragedy of Error]]", his first short story, was published anonymously. James's first literary payment was for an appreciation of Sir Walter Scott's novels, written for the ''[[North American Review]]''. He wrote fiction and nonfiction pieces for ''[[The Nation]]'' and ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'', where Fields was editor. In 1865, [[Edwin Lawrence Godkin|Ernest Lawrence Godkin]], the founder of ''The Nation'', visited the James family at their Boston residence in Ashburton Place; the purpose of his visit was to solicit contributions from Henry Senior and Henry Junior for the inaugural issue of the journal.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=221–223}}</ref> Henry Junior was later to describe his friendship with Godkin as "one of the longest and happiest of my life."<ref name=":3" /> In 1871, he published his first novel, ''[[Watch and Ward]]'', in serial form in the ''Atlantic Monthly''. The novel was later published in book form in 1878.

During a 14-month trip through Europe in 1869–70, he met [[John Ruskin]], [[Charles Dickens]], [[Matthew Arnold]], [[William Morris]], and [[George Eliot]]. Rome impressed him profoundly. "Here I am then in the Eternal City", he wrote to his brother William. "At last—for the first time—I live!"<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=12}}</ref> He attempted to support himself as a freelance writer in Rome and then secured a position as Paris correspondent for the ''New York Tribune'' through the influence of its editor, [[John Hay]]. When these efforts failed, he returned to New York City. During 1874 and 1875, he published ''Transatlantic Sketches'', ''[[A Passionate Pilgrim]]'' and ''[[Roderick Hudson]]''. In 1875, James wrote for ''The Nation'' every week; he received anywhere from $3 to $10 for brief paragraphs, $12 to $25 for book reviews and $25 to $40 for travel articles and lengthier items.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=223}}</ref> During this early period in his career, he was influenced by [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]].<ref name="harvp|Powers|1970|p=16">{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=16}}</ref>

In the fall of 1875, he moved to the [[Latin Quarter, Paris|Latin Quarter of Paris]]. Aside from two extended returns to America, he spent the next three decades—the rest of his life—in Europe. In Paris, he met [[Émile Zola|Zola]], [[Alphonse Daudet|Daudet]], [[Guy de Maupassant|Maupassant]], [[Ivan Turgenev|Turgenev]] and others.<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=14}}</ref> He stayed in Paris only a year before settling in London, where he established relationships with Macmillan and other publishers, who paid for serial instalments that they published in book form. The audience for these serialised novels was largely made up of middle-class women, and James struggled to fashion serious literary work within the strictures imposed by editors' and publishers' notions of what was suitable for young women to read. He lived in rented rooms, but was able to join gentlemen's clubs that had libraries and where he could entertain male friends. He was introduced to English society by [[Henry Adams]] and [[Charles Milnes Gaskell]], the latter introducing him to the [[Travellers Club|Travellers']] and the [[Reform Club]]s.<ref name="Gamble 2008">Gamble, Cynthia J. (2008). ''John Ruskin, Henry James and the Shropshire Lads'', London: New European Publications</ref><ref>Gamble, Cynthia J. (2015). ''Wenlock Abbey 1857–1919: A Shropshire Country House and the Milnes Gaskell Family''. London: Ellingham Press.</ref> He was also an honorary member of the [[Savile Club]], [[St James's Club]] and, in 1882, the [[Athenaeum Club, London|Athenaeum Club]].<ref>{{cite book|first=Frank Richard |last=Cowell |title=The Athenaeum: Club and Social Life in London, 1824–1974 |location=London |publisher=Heinemann |date=1975 |isbn=0-435-32010-6 |url={{Google books|cPW3AAAAIAAJ|page=33|text="Henry+James"|plainurl=true}}|page=33}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Humphry |last=Ward |authorlink=Thomas Humphry Ward |title=History of the Athenaeum 1824–1925 |location=London |publisher=Athenaeum Club |date=1926|url=https://archive.org/details/historyofathenum0000ward/page/277/mode/1up|page=277}}</ref>

In England, he met the leading figures of politics and culture. He continued to be a prolific writer, producing ''[[The American (novel)|The American]]'' (1877), ''[[The Europeans]]'' (1878), a revision of ''Watch and Ward'' (1878), ''[[French Poets and Novelists]]'' (1878), ''[[Hawthorne (book)|Hawthorne]]'' (1879), and several shorter works of fiction. In 1878, ''[[Daisy Miller]]'' established his fame on both sides of the Atlantic. It drew notice perhaps mostly because it depicted a woman whose behaviour is outside the social norms of Europe. He also began his first masterpiece,<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=15}}</ref> ''[[The Portrait of a Lady]]'', which appeared in 1881.

In 1877, he first visited [[Wenlock Abbey]] in Shropshire, home of his friend [[Charles Milnes Gaskell]], whom he had met through Henry Adams. He was much inspired by the darkly romantic abbey and the surrounding countryside, which feature in his essay "Abbeys and Castles".<ref name="Gamble 2008"/> In particular, the gloomy monastic fishponds behind the abbey are said to have inspired the lake in ''[[The Turn of the Screw]]''.<ref>Gamble, Cynthia, 2015 Wenlock Abbey 1857–1919: A Shropshire Country House and the Milnes Gaskell Family, Ellingham Press.</ref>

While living in London, James continued to follow the careers of the French realists, Émile Zola in particular. Their stylistic methods influenced his own work in the years to come.<ref name="harvp|Powers|1970|p=17">{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=17}}</ref> Hawthorne's influence on him faded during this period, replaced by George Eliot and Ivan Turgenev.<ref name="harvp|Powers|1970|p=16"/> The period from 1878 to 1881 had the publication of ''The Europeans'', ''[[Washington Square (novel)|Washington Square]]'', ''[[Confidence (novel)|Confidence]]'' and ''[[The Portrait of a Lady]]''.

The period from 1882 to 1883 was marked by several losses. His mother died in January 1882, while James was in Washington, D.C., on an extended visit to America.<ref>{{cite book| title=The Letters of Henry James Vol. 2: 1875–1883| author=Leon Edel| publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University| year=1975| pages=376–377}}</ref> He returned to his parents' home in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]], where he was together with all four of his siblings for the first time in 15 years.<ref>Edel, 1975; p. 379</ref> He returned to Europe in mid-1882, but was back in America by the end of the year following the death of his father. Emerson, an old family friend, died in 1882. His brother Wilkie and friend Turgenev both died in 1883.

===Middle years, 1884–1897===
In 1884, James made another visit to Paris, where he met again with Zola, Daudet, and Goncourt. He had been following the careers of the French "realist" or "naturalist" writers, and was increasingly influenced by them.<ref name="harvp|Powers|1970|p=17"/> In 1886, he published ''[[The Bostonians]]'' and ''[[The Princess Casamassima]]'', both influenced by the French writers that he had studied assiduously. Critical reaction and sales were poor. He wrote to Howells that the books had hurt his career rather than helped because they had "reduced the desire, and demand, for my productions to zero".<ref>Edel 1955, p. 55.</ref> During this time, he became friends with [[Robert Louis Stevenson]], [[John Singer Sargent]], [[Edmund Gosse]], [[George du Maurier]], [[Paul Bourget]], and [[Constance Fenimore Woolson]]. His third novel from the 1880s was ''[[The Tragic Muse]]''. Although he was following the precepts of Zola in his novels of the '80s, their tone and attitude are closer to the fiction of Alphonse Daudet.<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=19}}</ref> The lack of critical and financial success for his novels during this period led him to try writing for the theatre;<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=20}}</ref> His dramatic works and his experiences with theatre are discussed below.

In the last quarter of 1889, "for pure and copious lucre,"<ref>Letter to [[Grace Norton]], 22 Septembre 1890. Quoted in E. Harden, ''A Henry James Chronology'', p. 85.</ref> he started translating ''Port Tarascon'', the third volume of Daudet's adventures of [[Tartarin|Tartarin of Tarascon]]. Serialized in ''[[Harper's Magazine|Harper's Monthly]]'' from June 1890, this translation – praised as "clever" by ''[[The Spectator]]''<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=jkg9AQAAIAAJ&lpg=PA147 Port Tarascon], ''Literary supplement to The Spectator'', n°3266, 31 January 1891, p. 147.</ref> – was published in January 1891 by [[Sampson Low|Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington]].

After the stage failure of ''[[Guy Domville]]'' in 1895, James was near despair and thoughts of death plagued him.<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=28}}</ref> His depression was compounded by the deaths of those closest to him, including his sister Alice in 1892; his friend [[Wolcott Balestier]] in 1891; and Stevenson and Fenimore Woolson in 1894. The sudden death of Fenimore Woolson in January 1894, and the speculations of suicide surrounding her death, were particularly painful for him.<ref name="Woolson">{{cite book| title=Henry James Letters Vol. 3: 1883–1895| author=Leon Edel| publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University| year=1980| page=xvii–xviii}}</ref> Leon Edel wrote that the reverberations from Fenimore Woolson's death were such that "we can read a strong element of guilt and bewilderment in his letters, and, even more, in those extraordinary tales of the next half-dozen years, "[[The Altar of the Dead]]" and "[[The Beast in the Jungle]]".<ref name="Woolson"/>

The years spent on dramatic works were not entirely a loss. As he moved into the last phase of his career, he found ways to adapt dramatic techniques into the novel form. In the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, James made several trips through Europe. He spent a long stay in Italy in 1887. In 1888, he published the short novel ''[[The Aspern Papers]]'' and ''[[The Reverberator]]''.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Henry James |date=2002 |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |isbn=978-0-7910-6352-1 |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |series=Bloom's major novelists |location=Broomall, PA |pages=108}}</ref>

===Late years, 1898–1916===
{{multiple image
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In 1897–1898, he moved to [[Rye, East Sussex|Rye, Sussex]] and wrote ''[[The Turn of the Screw]]''; 1899–1900 had the publication of ''[[The Awkward Age]]'' and ''[[The Sacred Fount]]''. During 1902–1904, he wrote ''[[The Wings of the Dove]]'', ''[[The Ambassadors]]'', and ''[[The Golden Bowl]]''.

In 1904, he revisited America and lectured on Balzac. In 1906–1910, he published ''[[The American Scene]]'' and edited the "[[New York Edition]]", a 24-volume collection of his works. In 1910, his brother William died; Henry had just joined William from an unsuccessful search for relief in Europe, on what turned out to be Henry's last visit to the United States (summer 1910 to July 1911) and was near him when he died.<ref>Kaplan chapter 15.</ref>

In 1913, he wrote his autobiographies, ''[[A Small Boy and Others]]'' and ''[[Notes of a Son and Brother]]''. After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he did war work. In 1915, he became a British citizen and was awarded the [[Order of Merit]] the following year. He died on 28 February 1916, in [[Chelsea, London]], and was cremated at [[Golders Green Crematorium]]. A memorial was built to him in [[Chelsea Old Church]]. He had requested that his ashes be buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts.<ref>Wilson, Scott. ''Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons'', 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 23458–23459). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.</ref> This was not legally possible, but William's wife smuggled his ashes onboard a ship and sneaked them through customs, allowing her to bury him in their family plot.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gunter |title=Alice in Jamesland: The Story of Alice Howe Gibbens James |date=January 2009 |isbn=978-0803222755 |page=304|publisher=U of Nebraska Press }}</ref>

===Sexuality===
James regularly rejected suggestions that he should marry, and after settling in London, proclaimed himself "a bachelor". [[F. W. Dupee]], in several volumes on the James family, originated the theory that he had been in love with his cousin, Mary ("Minnie") Temple, but that a neurotic fear of sex kept him from admitting such affections: "James's invalidism&nbsp;... was itself the symptom of some fear of or scruple against sexual love on his part." Dupee used an episode from James's memoir, ''A Small Boy and Others'', recounting a dream of a Napoleonic image in the Louvre, to exemplify James's romanticism about Europe, a Napoleonic fantasy into which he fled.<ref>Dupee (1949){{clarify|reason=What book is this? I'm not finding it in the list of references|date=January 2014}}</ref><ref name="Dupee 1951">Dupee (1951)</ref>

Between 1953 and 1972, [[Leon Edel]] wrote a major five-volume biography of James, which used unpublished letters and documents after Edel gained the permission of James's family. Edel's portrayal of James included the suggestion he was celibate, a view first propounded by critic [[Saul Rosenzweig]] in 1943.<ref>Graham, Wendy "Henry James's Twarted Love", Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 10</ref> In 1996, Sheldon M. Novick published ''Henry James: The Young Master'', followed by ''Henry James: The Mature Master'' (2007). The first book "caused something of an uproar in Jamesian circles"<ref name="auto">{{cite news|last=Leavitt|first=David|author-link=David Leavitt|title=A Beast in the Jungle|date=23 December 2007|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/books/review/Leavitt2-t.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170519044221/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/books/review/Leavitt2-t.html|archive-date=19 May 2017}}</ref> as it challenged the previous received notion of celibacy, a once-familiar paradigm in biographies of homosexuals when direct evidence was nonexistent. Novick also criticised Edel for following the discounted Freudian interpretation of homosexuality "as a kind of failure."<ref name="auto"/> The difference of opinion erupted in a series of exchanges between Edel (and later [[Fred Kaplan (biographer)|Fred Kaplan]] filling in for Edel) and Novick, which were published by the online magazine ''[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]'', with Novick arguing that even the suggestion of celibacy went against James's own injunction "live!"—not "fantasize!"<ref>{{cite magazine|title= Henry James' Love Life|magazine= [[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]|date= 24 January 1997|url= https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1997/01/henry-james-love-life-8.html|access-date=29 May 2021}}</ref>

A letter James wrote in old age to [[Hugh Walpole]] has been cited as an explicit statement of this. Walpole confessed to him of indulging in "high jinks", and James wrote a reply endorsing it: "We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art, yours & mine, what we are talking about—& the only way to know it is to have lived & loved & cursed & floundered & enjoyed & suffered—I don't think I regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth".<ref>Leavitt, David, 'A Beast in the Jungle', ''The New York Times'', 23 December 2007</ref>

The interpretation of James as living a less austere emotional life has been subsequently explored by other scholars.<ref>Graham, Wendy "Henry James's Thwarted Love"; Bradley, John "Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire"; Haralson, Eric "Henry James and Queer Modernity".</ref> The often intense politics of Jamesian scholarship has also been the subject of studies.<ref>Anesko, Michael "Monopolizing the Master: Henry James and the Politics of Modern Literary Scholarship", Stanford University Press</ref> Author [[Colm Tóibín]] has said that [[Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick]]'s ''Epistemology of the Closet'' made a landmark difference to Jamesian scholarship by arguing that he be read as a homosexual writer whose desire to keep his sexuality a secret shaped his layered style and dramatic artistry. According to Tóibín, such a reading "removed James from the realm of [[dead white male]]s who wrote about posh people. He became our contemporary."<ref>{{cite news|first=Colm|last=Tóibín|author-link=Colm Tóibín|title=How Henry James's family tried to keep him in the closet|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=20 February 2016|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/colm-toibin-how-henry-james-family-tried-to-keep-him-in-the-closet|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170528114825/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/colm-toibin-how-henry-james-family-tried-to-keep-him-in-the-closet|archive-date=28 May 2017}}</ref>

James's letters to expatriate American sculptor [[Hendrik Christian Andersen]] have attracted particular attention. James met the 27-year-old Andersen in Rome in 1899, when James was 56, and wrote letters to Andersen that are intensely emotional: "I hold you, dearest boy, in my innermost love, & count on your feeling me—in every throb of your soul". In a letter of 6 May 1904, to his brother William, James referred to himself as "always your hopelessly celibate even though sexagenarian Henry".<ref>Ignas Skrupskelis and Elizabeth Berkeley, eds. (1994), p. 271.</ref><ref>Ignas Skrupskelis and Elizabeth Berkeley, eds. (1997), ''William and Henry James: Selected Letters'', The University Press of Virginia, p. 447.</ref> How accurate that description might have been is the subject of contention among James's biographers,<ref name="Edel pp. 306-316">Edel, 306–316 {{clarify|reason=What is the Edel book that this refers to?|date=January 2014}}</ref> but the letters to Andersen were occasionally quasierotic: "I put, my dear boy, my arm around you, & feel the pulsation, thereby, as it were, of our excellent future & your admirable endowment."<ref>Zorzi (2004)</ref>

His numerous letters to the many young [[homosexual men]] among his close male friends are more forthcoming. To his homosexual friend [[Howard Sturgis]], James could write: "I repeat, almost to indiscretion, that I could live with you. Meanwhile, I can only try to live without you."<ref>{{harvp|Gunter|Jobe|2001}}</ref> In another letter Sturgis, following a long visit, James refers jocularly to their "happy little congress of two".<ref>{{harvp|Gunter|Jobe|2001|p=125}}</ref> In letters to Hugh Walpole, he pursues convoluted jokes and puns about their relationship, referring to himself as an elephant who "paws you oh so benevolently" and winds about Walpole his "well-meaning old trunk".<ref>{{harvp|Gunter|Jobe|2001|p=179}}</ref> His letters to [[Walter Van Rensselaer Berry|Walter Berry]] printed by the [[Black Sun Press]] have long been celebrated for their lightly veiled eroticism.<ref>''Letters of Henry James to Walter Berry'', Black Sun Press (1928).</ref>

However, James corresponded in equally extravagant language with his many female friends, writing, for example, to fellow novelist [[Lucy Clifford]]: "Dearest Lucy! What shall I say? when I love you so very, very much, and see you nine times for once that I see Others! Therefore I think that—if you want it made clear to the meanest intelligence—I love you more than I love Others."<ref>Demoor and Chisholm (1999) p. 79</ref> To his New York friend [[Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones]]: "Dearest Mary Cadwalader. I yearn over you, but I yearn in vain; & your long silence really breaks my heart, mystifies, depresses, almost alarms me, to the point even of making me wonder if poor unconscious & doting old Célimare [Jones's pet name for James] has 'done' anything, in some dark somnambulism of the spirit, which has&nbsp;... given you a bad moment, or a wrong impression, or a 'colourable pretext'&nbsp;... However these things may be, he loves you as tenderly as ever; nothing, to the end of time, will ever detach him from you, & he remembers those Eleventh St. matutinal ''intimes'' hours, those telephonic matinées, as the most romantic of his life&nbsp;..."<ref>{{harvp|Gunter|2000|p=146}}</ref> His long friendship with American novelist [[Constance Fenimore Woolson]], in whose house he lived for a number of weeks in Italy in 1887, and his shock and grief over her suicide in 1894, are discussed in detail in Edel's biography and play a central role in a study by [[Lyndall Gordon]]. Edel conjectured that Woolson was in love with James and killed herself in part because of his coldness, but Woolson's biographers have objected to Edel's account.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Torsney |first=Cheryl B. |title=Constance Fenimore Woolson: the grief of artistry |date=1989 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-1101-2 |location=Athens |pages=15}}</ref>

==Works==
{{Main|Henry James bibliography}}

===Style and themes===
[[File:Portrait of Henry James 1913.jpg|thumb|upright|''Portrait of Henry James'', charcoal drawing by [[John Singer Sargent]] (1912)]]

James is one of the major figures of [[wikt:transatlantic|trans-Atlantic]] literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from the [[Old World]] (Europe), embodying a feudal civilisation that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the [[New World]] (United States), where people are often brash, open, and [[assertiveness|assertive]], and embody the virtues of the new American society—particularly personal freedom and a more exacting moral character. James explores this [[clash of personalities]] and cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power is exercised well or badly.

His protagonists were often young American women facing oppression or abuse, and as his secretary [[Theodora Bosanquet]] remarked in her monograph ''Henry James at Work'':

{{blockquote|text=When he walked out of the refuge of his study and into the world and looked around him, he saw a place of torment, where creatures of prey perpetually thrust their claws into the quivering flesh of doomed, defenseless children of light&nbsp;... His novels are a repeated exposure of this wickedness, a reiterated and passionate plea for the fullest [[Political freedom|freedom]] of development, unimperiled by reckless and barbarous stupidity.<ref>Bosanquet (1982) pp. 275–276</ref>}}

[[Philip Guedalla]] jokingly described three phases in the development of James's prose: "James I, James II, and The Old Pretender,"<ref>[[Guedalla, Philip]] (1921). [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.88538 ''Supers & Supermen: Studies in Politics, History and Letters''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150925054942/https://books.google.com/books?id=E0luAAAAMAAJ&PA45 |date=25 September 2015 }}, p. 45. Alfred A. Knopf. Retrieved 27 January 2014.</ref> and observers do often group his works of fiction into three periods. In his apprentice years, culminating with the masterwork ''The Portrait of a Lady'', his style was simple and direct (by the standards of Victorian magazine writing) and he experimented widely with forms and methods, generally narrating from a conventionally omniscient point of view. Plots generally concern romance, except for the three big novels of social commentary that conclude this period. In the second period, as noted above, he abandoned the serialised novel and from 1890 to about 1897, he wrote short stories and plays. Finally, in his third and last period he returned to the long, serialised novel. Beginning in the second period, but most noticeably in the third; he increasingly abandoned direct statement in favour of frequent double negatives, and complex descriptive imagery. Single paragraphs began to run for page after page, in which an initial noun would be succeeded by pronouns surrounded by clouds of adjectives and prepositional clauses, far from their original referents, and verbs would be deferred and then preceded by a series of adverbs. The overall effect could be a vivid evocation of a scene as perceived by a sensitive observer. It has been debated whether this change of style was engendered by James's shifting from writing to dictating to a typist,<ref>Miller, James E. Jr., ed. (1972). [https://books.google.com/books?id=lANfu4yo0P4C&pg=PA268 ''Theory of Fiction: Henry James''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151002060937/https://books.google.com/books?id=lANfu4yo0P4C&pg=PA268 |date=2 October 2015 }}, pp. 268–69. University of Nebraska Press. Retrieved 27 February 2014.</ref> a change made during the composition of ''[[What Maisie Knew]]''.<ref>Edel, Leon, ed. (1984). [https://books.google.com/books?id=Ytg3CfAmV0EC&pg=PA4 ''Henry James: Letters, Vol. IV, 1895–1916''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151002062351/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ytg3CfAmV0EC&pg=PA4 |date=2 October 2015 }}, p. 4. Harvard University Press. Retrieved 17 February 2014.</ref>

In its intense focus on the consciousness of his major characters, James's later work foreshadows extensive developments in 20th-century fiction.<ref>Wagenknecht (1983).</ref>{{refn|See James's prefaces, Horne's study of his revisions for ''The New York Edition'', Edward Wagenknecht's ''The Novels of Henry James'' (1983) among many discussions of the changes in James's narrative technique and style over the course of his career.|group=nb}} Indeed, he might have influenced stream-of-consciousness writers such as [[Virginia Woolf]], who not only read some of his novels but also wrote essays about them.<ref>Woolf (March 2003) pp. 33, 39–40, 58, 86, 215, 301, 351.</ref> Both contemporary and modern readers have found the late style difficult and unnecessary; his friend [[Edith Wharton]], who admired him greatly, said that some passages in his work were all but incomprehensible.<ref>Edith Wharton (1925) pp. 90–91</ref> James was harshly portrayed by [[H.&nbsp;G. Wells]] as a hippopotamus laboriously attempting to pick up a pea that had got into a corner of its cage.<ref>H. G. Wells, Boon (1915) p. 101.</ref> The "late James" style was ably parodied by [[Max Beerbohm]] in "The Mote in the Middle Distance".<ref>Beerbohm, Max (1922).  "The Mote in the Middle Distance." In [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_mE5aAAAAMAAJ/page/n7 <!-- pg=1 --> ''A Christmas Garland''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150925015008/https://books.google.com/books?id=mE5aAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1 |date=25 September 2015 }}, p. 1. E.P. Dutton & Company. Retrieved 27 January 2014.</ref>

More important for his work overall may have been his position as an [[expatriate]], and in other ways an outsider, living in Europe. While he came from middle-class and provincial beginnings (seen from the perspective of European polite society), he worked very hard to gain access to all levels of society, and the settings of his fiction range from working-class to [[aristocracy|aristocratic]], and often describe the efforts of middle-class Americans to make their way in European capitals. He confessed he got some of his best story ideas from gossip at the dinner table or at country house weekends.<ref>{{Cite web |last=James |first=Henry |date=1908 |title=Preface to volume 10 of the New York edition (containing: The spoils of Poynton; A London life; The chaperon) |url=http://www.henryjames.org.uk/prefaces/text10_inframe.htm |access-date=15 July 2024 |archive-date=13 October 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061013003155/http://www.henryjames.org.uk/prefaces/text10_inframe.htm |url-status=dead}}</ref>{{refn|James's prefaces to the ''[[New York Edition]]'' of his fiction often discuss such origins for his stories. See, for instance, the preface to ''[[The Spoils of Poynton]]''.|group=nb}} He worked for a living, however, and lacked the experiences of select schools, university, and army service, the common bonds of masculine society. He was furthermore a man whose tastes and interests were, according to the prevailing standards of [[Victorian era]] Anglo-American culture, rather feminine, and who was shadowed by the cloud of prejudice that then and later accompanied suspicions of his homosexuality.<ref name="Edel 1984 v.4 p. 170">Leon Edel (1984) volume 4, p. 170</ref>{{refn|James himself noted his "outsider" status. In a letter of 2 October 1901, to W. Morton Fullerton, James talked of the "essential loneliness of my life" as "the deepest thing" about him.<ref name="Edel 1984 v.4 p. 170" />|group=nb}} Edmund Wilson compared James's objectivity to Shakespeare's:

{{blockquote|text=One would be in a position to appreciate James better if one compared him with the dramatists of the seventeenth century—[[Jean Racine|Racine]] and [[Molière]], whom he resembles in form as well as in point of view, and even [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], when allowances are made for the most extreme differences in subject and form. These poets are not, like [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]] and [[Thomas Hardy|Hardy]], writers of melodrama—either humorous or pessimistic, nor secretaries of society like [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]], nor prophets like [[Leo Tolstoy|Tolstoy]]: they are occupied simply with the presentation of conflicts of moral character, which they do not concern themselves about softening or averting. They do not indict society for these situations: they regard them as universal and inevitable. They do not even blame God for allowing them: they accept them as the conditions of life.<ref>Dabney (1983) pp. 128–129</ref>}}

Many of James's stories may also be seen as psychological thought experiments about selection. In his preface to the New York edition of ''The American'', James describes the development of the story in his mind as exactly such: the "situation" of an American, "some robust but insidiously beguiled and betrayed, some cruelly wronged, compatriot..." with the focus of the story being on the response of this wronged man.<ref>The American, 1907, p. vi–vii</ref> ''The Portrait of a Lady'' may be an experiment to see what happens when an idealistic young woman suddenly becomes very rich. In many of his tales, characters seem to exemplify alternative futures and possibilities, as most markedly in "[[The Jolly Corner]]", in which the protagonist and a ghost-doppelganger live alternative American and European lives; and in others, like ''The Ambassadors'', an older James seems fondly to regard his own younger self facing a crucial moment.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bell |first=Millicent |title=Meaning in Henry James |date=1991 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-55762-8 |location=Cambridge, Mass |pages=324}}</ref>

===Major novels===
The first period of James's fiction, usually considered to have culminated in ''[[The Portrait of a Lady]]'', concentrated on the contrast between Europe and America. The style of these novels is generally straightforward and, though personally characteristic, well within the norms of 19th-century fiction. ''[[Roderick Hudson]]'' (1875) is a [[Künstlerroman]] that traces the development of the title character, an extremely talented sculptor. Although the book shows some signs of immaturity—this was James's first serious attempt at a full-length novel—it has attracted favourable comment due to the vivid realisation of the three major characters: Roderick Hudson, superbly gifted but unstable and unreliable; Rowland Mallet, Roderick's limited but much more mature friend and patron; and Christina Light, one of James's most enchanting and maddening [[femme fatale|femmes fatales]]. The pair of Hudson and Mallet has been seen as representing the two sides of James's own nature: the wildly imaginative artist and the brooding conscientious mentor.<ref>Kraft (1969) p. 68.</ref>

In ''The Portrait of a Lady'' (1881), James concluded the first phase of his career with a novel that remains his most popular piece of long fiction. The story is of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who "affronts her destiny" and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. The narrative is set mainly in Europe, especially in England and Italy. Generally regarded as the masterpiece of his early phase, ''The Portrait of a Lady'' is described as a [[psychological fiction|psychological novel]], exploring the minds of his characters, and almost a work of social science, exploring the differences between Europeans and Americans, the old and the new worlds.<ref>Brownstein (2004)</ref>

The second period of James's career, which extends from the publication of ''[[The Portrait of a Lady]]'' through the end of the 19th century, features less popular novels, including ''[[The Princess Casamassima]]'', published serially in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1885–1886, and ''[[The Bostonians]]'', published serially in ''[[The Century Magazine|The Century]]'' during the same period. This period also featured James's celebrated Gothic novella, ''[[The Turn of the Screw]]'' (1898).

The third period of James's career reached its most significant achievement in three novels published just around the start of the 20th century: ''[[The Wings of the Dove]]'' (1902), ''[[The Ambassadors]]'' (1903), and ''[[The Golden Bowl]]'' (1904). Critic [[F. O. Matthiessen]] called this "trilogy" James's major phase, and these novels have certainly received intense critical study. The second-written of the books, ''The Wings of the Dove'', was the first published because it was not serialised.<ref>Hazel Hutchison, ''Brief Lives: Henry James''. London: Hesperus Press, 2012: "The elegiac tone of the novel did not appeal to periodical editors, and the novel went straight into book form in 1902, ahead of ''The Ambassadors'', which ran in the ''North American Review'' from January to December 1903 and was published as a book later that same year." Retrieved 1 December 2017.</ref> This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American [[inheritance|heiress]] stricken with a serious disease, and her impact on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable motives, while others are more self-interested. James stated in his autobiographical books that Milly was based on Minny Temple, his beloved cousin, who died at an early age of tuberculosis. He said that he attempted in the novel to wrap her memory in the "beauty and dignity of art".<ref>Posnock (1987) p. 114</ref>

===Shorter narratives===
[[File:Lamb House, Rye.jpg|thumb|[[Lamb House]] in [[Rye, East Sussex]], where James lived from 1897 to 1914]]

James was particularly interested in what he called the "beautiful and blest ''nouvelle''", or the longer form of short narrative. Still, he produced a number of very short stories in which he achieved notable compression of sometimes complex subjects. The following narratives are representative of James's achievement in the shorter forms of fiction.{{citation needed|date=January 2014}}

{{Div col}}
* "[[A Tragedy of Error]]" (1864), short story
* "[[The Story of a Year]]" (1865), short story
* ''[[A Passionate Pilgrim]]'' (1871), novella
* ''[[Madame de Mauves]]'' (1874), novella
* ''[[Daisy Miller]]'' (1878), novella
* ''[[The Aspern Papers]]'' (1888), novella
* ''[[The Lesson of the Master]]'' (1888), novella
* ''[[The Pupil (short story)|The Pupil]]'' (1891), short story
* "[[The Figure in the Carpet]]" (1896), short story
* ''[[The Beast in the Jungle]]'' (1903), novella
* ''An International Episode'' (1878)
* ''Picture and Text''
* ''Four Meetings'' (1885)
* ''A London Life, and Other Tales'' (1889)
* ''[[The Spoils of Poynton]]'' (1896)
* ''Embarrassments'' (1896)
* ''The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw, Covering End'' (1898)
* ''[[In the Cage]]'' (1898), novella
* ''A Little Tour of France'' (1900)
* ''[[The Sacred Fount]]'' (1901)
* ''[[The Birthplace]]'' (1903)
* ''Views and Reviews'' (1908)
* ''The Finer Grain''  (1910)
* ''The Outcry'' (1911)
* ''Lady Barbarina: The Siege of London, An International Episode and Other Tales'' (1922)
* ''Georgina's Reasons'' (1884), novella
{{Div col end}}

===Plays===
At several points in his career, James wrote plays, beginning with one-act plays written for periodicals in 1869 and 1871<ref>Edel (1990) pp. 75, 89</ref> and a dramatisation of his popular novella ''Daisy Miller'' in 1882.<ref>Edel (1990) p. 121</ref> From 1890 to 1892, having received a bequest that freed him from magazine publication, he made a strenuous effort to succeed on the London stage, writing a half-dozen plays, of which only one, a dramatisation of his novel ''The American'', was produced. This play was performed for several years by a touring repertory company, and had a respectable run in London, but did not earn very much money for James. His other plays written at this time were not produced.{{citation needed|date=February 2019}}

In 1893, however, he responded to a request from actor-manager George Alexander for a serious play for the opening of his renovated St. James's Theatre, and wrote a long drama, ''Guy Domville'', which Alexander produced. A noisy uproar arose on the opening night, 5 January 1895, with hissing from the gallery when James took his bow after the final curtain, and the author was upset. The play received moderately good reviews and had a modest run of four weeks before being taken off to make way for [[Oscar Wilde]]'s ''[[The Importance of Being Earnest]]'', which Alexander thought would have better prospects for the coming season.{{citation needed|date=February 2019}}

After the stresses and disappointment of these efforts, James insisted that he would write no more for the theatre, but within weeks had agreed to write a [[curtain-raiser]] for [[Ellen Terry]]. This became the one-act "Summersoft", which he later rewrote into a short story, "Covering End", and then expanded into a full-length play, ''The High Bid'', which had a brief run in London in 1907, when James made another concerted effort to write for the stage. He wrote three new plays, two of which were in production when the death of [[Edward&nbsp;VII]] on 6 May 1910 plunged London into mourning and theatres closed. Discouraged by failing health and the stresses of theatrical work, James did not renew his efforts in the theatre, but recycled his plays as successful novels. ''[[The Outcry]]'' was a best-seller in the United States when it was published in 1911. During 1890–1893, when he was most engaged with the theatre, James wrote a good deal of theatrical criticism, and assisted Elizabeth Robins and others in translating and producing Henrik Ibsen for the first time in London.<ref>Novick (2007) pp. 15–160 ''et passim''.</ref>

Leon Edel argued in his psychoanalytic biography that James was traumatised by the opening-night uproar that greeted ''Guy Domville'', and that it plunged him into a prolonged depression. The successful later novels, in Edel's view, were the result of a kind of self-analysis, expressed in fiction, which partly freed him from his fears. Other biographers and scholars have not accepted this account, with the more common view being that of F.O. Matthiessen, who wrote: "Instead of being crushed by the collapse of his hopes [for the theatre]... he felt a resurgence of new energy."<ref>Matthiessen and Murdoch (1981) p. 179.</ref><ref>Bradley (1999) p. 21, n</ref><ref>Novick (2007) pp. 219–225 ''et passim''.</ref>

===Nonfiction===
Beyond his fiction, James was one of the more important literary critics in the history of the novel. In his classic essay ''[[Partial Portraits|The Art of Fiction]]'' (1884), he argued against rigid prescriptions on the novelist's choice of subject and method of treatment. He maintained that the widest possible freedom in content and approach would help ensure narrative fiction's continued vitality. James wrote many critical articles on other novelists; typical is his book-length [[Hawthorne (book)|study]] of Nathaniel Hawthorne, which has been the subject of critical debate. Richard Brodhead has suggested that the study was emblematic of James's struggle with Hawthorne's influence, and constituted an effort to place the elder writer "at a disadvantage."<ref>Richard Brodhead. ''The School of Hawthorne'' (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 137.</ref> Gordon Fraser, meanwhile, has suggested that the study was part of a more commercial effort by James to introduce himself to British readers as Hawthorne's natural successor.<ref>Gordon Fraser. "Anxiety of Audience: Economies of Readership in James's ''Hawthorne''." ''The Henry James Review'' 34, no. 1 (2013): 1–2.</ref>

When James assembled the ''[[New York Edition]]'' of his fiction in his final years, he wrote a series of prefaces that subjected his own work to searching, occasionally harsh criticism.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rawlings |first=Peter |date=July 1998 |title=Review: The Prefaces of Henry James: Framing the Modern Reader |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A21112582/GPS?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=63e3820d |journal=Essays in Criticism |volume=48 |issue=3 |doi=10.1093/eic/48.3.284 |doi-broken-date=1 July 2025 |via=GALE|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

[[File:HenryJames1897.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Photograph of Henry James (1897)]]

At 22, James wrote ''The Noble School of Fiction'' for ''The Nation''{{'}}s first issue in 1865. He wrote, in all, over 200 essays and book, art, and theatre reviews for the magazine.<ref>[[Katrina vanden Heuvel|vanden Heuvel]] (1990) p. 5</ref>

For most of his life, James harboured ambitions for success as a playwright. He converted his novel ''The American'' into a play that enjoyed modest returns in the early 1890s. In all, he wrote about a dozen plays, most of which went unproduced. His costume drama ''Guy Domville'' failed disastrously on its opening night in 1895. James then largely abandoned his efforts to conquer the stage and returned to his fiction. In his ''[[Notebooks of Henry James|Notebooks]]'', he maintained that his theatrical experiment benefited his novels and tales by helping him dramatise his characters' thoughts and emotions. James produced a small amount of theatrical criticism, including appreciations of Henrik Ibsen.<ref>[[Allan Wade|Wade]] (1948) pp. 243–260.</ref>{{refn|For a general discussion of James's efforts as a playwright, see Edel's referenced edition of his plays.|group=nb}}

With his wide-ranging artistic interests, James occasionally wrote on the visual arts. He wrote a favourable assessment of fellow expatriate [[John Singer Sargent]], a painter whose critical status has improved markedly since the mid twentieth century. James also wrote sometimes charming, sometimes brooding articles about various places where he visited and lived. His books of travel writing include ''[[Italian Hours]]'' (an example of the charming approach) and ''[[The American Scene]]'' (on the brooding side).{{citation needed|date=January 2014}}

James was one of the great letter-writers of any era. More than 10,000 of his personal letters are extant, and over 3,000 have been published in a large number of collections. A complete edition of James's letters began publication in 2006, edited by Pierre Walker and Greg Zacharias. {{as of|2014}}, eight volumes have been published, covering from 1855 to 1880.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/Catalog/ProductSearch.aspx?ExtendedSearch=false&SearchOnLoad=true&rhl=The+Complete+Letters+of+Henry+James&sj=721&rhdcid=721 |title=Product Search – University of Nebraska Press |access-date=10 February 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140222214028/https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/Catalog/ProductSearch.aspx?ExtendedSearch=false&SearchOnLoad=true&rhl=The+Complete+Letters+of+Henry+James&sj=721&rhdcid=721 |archive-date=22 February 2014 }}</ref> James's correspondents included contemporaries such as [[Robert Louis Stevenson]], [[Edith Wharton]], and [[Joseph Conrad]], along with many others in his wide circle of friends and acquaintances. The content of the letters range from trivialities to serious discussions of artistic, social, and personal issues.<ref>Edel (1983) volume 4 p. 208</ref>

Very late in life, James began a series of autobiographical works: ''A Small Boy and Others'', ''Notes of a Son and Brother'', and the unfinished ''[[The Middle Years (autobiography)|The Middle Years]]''. These books portray the development of a classic observer who was passionately interested in artistic creation but was somewhat reticent about participating fully in the life around him.<ref name="Dupee 1951"/>

==Reception==
===Criticism, biographies and fictional treatments===
[[File:LambHouseInterior.jpg|thumb|upright|Interior view of Lamb House, James's residence from 1897 until 1914 (1898)]]

James's work has remained steadily popular with the limited audience of educated readers to whom he spoke during his lifetime, and has remained firmly in the canon, but after his death, some American critics, such as [[Van Wyck Brooks]], expressed hostility towards James for his long expatriation and eventual naturalisation as a British subject.<ref>Brooks (1925)</ref> Other critics such as [[E.&nbsp;M. Forster]] complained about what they saw as James's squeamishness in the treatment of sex and other possibly controversial material, or dismissed his late style as difficult and obscure, relying heavily on extremely long sentences and excessively [[latinate]] language.<ref>Forster (1956) pp. 153–163</ref> 'Even in his lifetime,' explains scholar Hazel Hutchinson, 'James had a reputation as a difficult writer for clever readers.'<ref>[https://theconversation.com/the-real-henry-james-will-never-stand-up-thats-his-greatest-legacy-55455]. The Conversation. Retrieved 10 January 2021.</ref> [[Oscar Wilde]] criticised him for writing "fiction as if it were a painful duty".<ref>[http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/o/oscar_wilde_6.html Oscar Wilde Quotes – Page 6]. BrainyQuote. Retrieved 10 August 2011.</ref> [[Vernon Parrington]], composing a canon of American literature, condemned James for having cut himself off from America. [[Jorge Luis Borges]] wrote about him, "Despite the scruples and delicate complexities of James, his work suffers from a major defect: the absence of life."<ref>Borges and de Torres (1971) p. 55.</ref> And [[Virginia Woolf]], writing to [[Lytton Strachey]], asked, "Please tell me what you find in Henry James.&nbsp;... we have his works here, and I read, and I can't find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar and pale as [[Walter Lamb (classicist)|Walter Lamb]]. Is there really any sense in it?"<ref>[http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=17800 Reading Experience Database Display Record] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110813030643/http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=17800 |date=13 August 2011 }}. Can-red-lec.library.dal.ca. Retrieved 10 August 2011.</ref> Novelist [[W. Somerset Maugham]] wrote, "He did not know the English as an Englishman instinctively knows them and so his English characters never to my mind quite ring true," and argued, "The great novelists, even in seclusion, have lived life passionately. Henry James was content to observe it from a window."<ref>W. Somerset Maugham, ''The Vagrant Mood'', p. 203.</ref> Maugham nevertheless wrote, "The fact remains that those last novels of his, notwithstanding their unreality, make all other novels, except the very best, unreadable."<ref>Maugham, op. cit., p209.</ref> [[Colm Tóibín]] observed that James "never really wrote about the English very well. His English characters don't work for me."<ref>[http://radioopensource.org/colm-toibin-the-living-spell-of-henry-james/ Colm Tóibín in conversation with Chris Lydon, in Cambridge, 2004] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919020257/http://radioopensource.org/colm-toibin-the-living-spell-of-henry-james/ |date=19 September 2015 }}. Retrieved 7 December 2015.</ref>

Despite these criticisms, James is now valued for his psychological and moral realism, his masterful creation of character, his low-key but playful humour, and his assured command of the language. In his 1983 book, ''The Novels of Henry James'', [[Edward Wagenknecht]] offers an assessment that echoes Theodora Bosanquet's:

{{blockquote|text="To be completely great," Henry James wrote in an early review, "a work of art must lift up the heart," and his own novels do this to an outstanding degree&nbsp;... More than sixty years after his death, the great novelist who sometimes professed to have no opinions stands foursquare in the great Christian [[Christian humanism|humanistic]] and democratic tradition. The men and women who, at the height of [[World War&nbsp;II]], raided the secondhand shops for his out-of-print books knew what they were about. For no writer ever raised a braver banner to which all who love freedom might adhere.<ref>Wagenknecht (1983) pp. 261–262</ref>}}

[[William Dean Howells]] saw James as a representative of a new realist school of literary art, which broke with the English romantic tradition epitomised by the works of Charles Dickens and William Thackeray. Howells wrote that realism found "its chief exemplar in Mr. James&nbsp;... A novelist he is not, after the old fashion, or after any fashion but his own."<ref>Lauter (2010) p. 364.</ref> [[F. R. Leavis]] championed Henry James as a novelist of "established pre-eminence" in ''[[The Great Tradition]]'' (1948), asserting that ''The Portrait of a Lady'' and ''The Bostonians'' were "the two most brilliant novels in the language."<ref>F. R. Leavis, ''The Great Tradition'' (New York University Press, 1969), p. 155.</ref> James is now prized as a master of point of view who moved literary fiction forward by insisting in showing, not telling, his stories to the reader.

==Portrayals in fiction==
Henry James has been the subject of a number of novels and stories, including:<ref>{{cite web|url=http://blog.loa.org/2010/09/henry-james-as-fictional-character.html|title=Henry James as a fictional character|website=blog.loa.org|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714191154/http://blog.loa.org/2010/09/henry-james-as-fictional-character.html|archive-date=14 July 2014}}</ref>

{{Div col}}
* ''[[Boon (novel)|Boon]]'' by [[H. G. Wells]]
* ''Author, Author'' by [[David Lodge (author)|David Lodge]]
* ''Youth'' by [[J. M. Coetzee]]
* ''[[The Master (novel)|The Master]]'' by [[Colm Tóibín]]
* ''Hotel de Dream'' by [[Edmund White]]
* ''Lions at Lamb House'' by [[Edwin M. Yoder]]
* ''Felony'' by [[Emma Tennant]]
* ''[[Dictation: A Quartet|Dictation]]'' by [[Cynthia Ozick]]
* ''The James Boys'' by Richard Liebmann-Smith
* ''The Open Door'' by Elizabeth Maguire
* ''The Great Divide'' by Rex Hunter<ref>{{cite web|last=Australia |first=Writing |title=Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award 2013 – Shortlist Announcement |url=http://writingaustralia.org.au/2013/02/writing-australia-unpublished-manuscript-award-2013-shortlist-announcement/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140305134308/http://writingaustralia.org.au/2013/02/writing-australia-unpublished-manuscript-award-2013-shortlist-announcement/ |archive-date=5 March 2014 }}</ref>
* ''[[Wild Nights!|The Master at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1914–1916]]'' by [[Joyce Carol Oates]]
* ''The Typewriter's Tale'' by Michael Heyns
* ''Henry James' Midnight Song'' by Carol de Chellis Hill
* ''The Fifth Heart'' by [[Dan Simmons]]
* ''[[Earthly Powers]]'' by [[Anthony Burgess]]
* ''[[Empire (Vidal novel)|Empire]]'' by [[Gore Vidal]]
* ''The Maze at Windermere'' by [[Gregory Blake Smith]]
* ''Ringrose the Pirate'' by [[Don Nigro]]
{{Div col end}}

[[David Lodge (author)|David Lodge]] also wrote a long essay about Henry James in his collection ''The Year of Henry James: The Story of a Novel''.

==Adaptations==
Henry James's stories and novels have been adapted to film, television, and music video over 150 times (some TV shows did upwards of a dozen stories) from 1933 to 2018.<ref name="imdb.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0416556/|title=Henry James|publisher=IMDb}}</ref> The majority of these are in English, but with adaptations in French (13), Spanish (7), Italian (6), German (5), Portuguese (1), Yugoslavian (1), and Swedish (1).<ref name="imdb.com"/>

Those most frequently adapted include:

* ''[[The Turn of the Screw]]'' (28 times)
* ''[[The Aspern Papers]]'' (17 times)
* ''[[Washington Square (novel)|Washington Square]]'' (8 times), as ''The Heiress'' (6 times), as ''Victoria'' (once)
* ''[[The Wings of the Dove]]'' (9 times)
* ''[[The Beast in the Jungle]]'' (5 times)<ref>{{Cite web |date=4 October 2017 |title=A Fera na Selva :: Entrevista exclusiva com Paulo Betti |url=https://www.papodecinema.com.br/entrevistas/a-fera-na-selva-entrevista-exclusiva-com-paulo-betti/ |website=Papo de Cinema |language=Portuguese}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Oggiano |first=Roberto |date=31 January 2019 |title=Clara van Gool • Director of The Beast in the Jungle |url=https://cineuropa.org/en/interview/366663/ |website=[[Cineuropa]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Goodfellow |first=Melanie |date=18 January 2023 |title='The Beast in the Jungle' Clip: Berlinale Henry James Adaptation Stars Anaïs Demoustier, Tom Mercier & Béatrice Dalle |url=https://deadline.com/video/the-beast-in-the-jungle-clip-berlinale-anais-demoustier-tom-mercier-amp-beatrice-dalle-patric-chiha/ |website=[[Deadline Hollywood|Deadline]] |access-date=22 January 2023 |archive-date=22 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122182026/https://deadline.com/video/the-beast-in-the-jungle-clip-berlinale-anais-demoustier-tom-mercier-amp-beatrice-dalle-patric-chiha/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Roos |first=Gautier |date=25 December 2021 |title=[INTERVIEW BERTRAND BONELLO] Le grand entretien chaos |trans-title=[INTERVIEW BERTRAND BONELLO] The Great Chaos Interview |url=https://www.chaosreign.fr/interview-bertrand-bonello-coma-nocturama-la-bete-grand-entretien-fleuve-de-hiver-2021/5/ |website=Chaos Reign |language=French}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Gennis |first=Sadie |date=10 October 2020 |title=The Haunting of Bly Manor's Henry James References, Explained |url=https://www.tvguide.com/news/the-haunting-of-bly-manor-references-henry-james-explained/ |website=[[TV Guide]]}}</ref>
* ''[[The Bostonians]]'' (4 times)
* ''[[Daisy Miller]]'' (4 times)
* ''[[The Sense of the Past]]'' (4 times)
* ''[[The Ambassadors]]'' (3 times)
* ''[[The Portrait of a Lady]]'' (3 times)
* ''[[The American (novel)|The American]]'' (3 times)
* ''[[What Maisie Knew]]'' (3 times)
* ''[[The Golden Bowl]]'' (2 times)
* ''The Marriages'' (twice)<ref>{{Cite news|title=Tele Follow-Up Comment|author=|date=25 January 1950|work=Variety|page=62|quote=Producer Fred Coe last Sunday night (22) turned to a grim theme in Henry James' 'The Marriages' and with one of the most neatly cast groups of actors yet, did a fine job on it. Adaptation by H. R. Hays, combined with the telling direction of Delbert Mann, fully captured the mood of the James story, dealing with a neurotic daughter and weak-willed son messing up the life of their widowed father. Margaret Phillips as the daughter and Henry Daniell as the father topped the standout cast, with Miss Phillips particularly good. Cheter Stratton gave a good reading as the son and Carol Goodner was fine as the American widow.|id={{ProQuest|1286075338}}}}</ref><ref>Balch, Jack (February 1950). [https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Televiser/Televiser-1950-02.pdf#page=22 "Flipping Titles"]. ''Televiser''. p.&nbsp;20. Retrieved 19 July 2024.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=26 October 1974 |title=Adela - Affairs Of The Heart (Season 1, Episode 5) - Apple TV |url=https://tv.apple.com/us/episode/adela/umc.cmc.68sj4s8vixx84z5sjx5t4qlpi |access-date=19 September 2024 |website=Apple TV |language=en-US}}</ref>
* ''The Ghostly Rental'' (once)<ref>{{Cite news|title=film Reviews: Henry James' 'The Ghostly Rental'|author=Kelly, Brendan|date=30 August 1999|work=Variety|page=62|quote=Roger Corman takes on Henry James and the results are just about what one might expect. [It] is indeed a B-movie spin on upscale Victorian Gothic, but it's not quite the campy fun it could've been. There's a decent yarn lurking in here somewhere, though it's smothered by remarkably bad acting, much too dark lensing and leaden pacing. Lacking the requisite thrills 'n' spills to please the action crowd, this bloody ghost story will be a marginal video item at best.|id={{ProQuest|1401421623}}}}</ref>

==Notes==
{{Reflist|group=nb}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Sources==
{{refbegin|2}}
* [[Harold Bloom]] (2009) [2001]. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=iKiWPr8YU9EC&pg=PA12 Henry James]''. [[Infobase Publishing]], originally published by Chelsea House. {{ISBN|978-1-4381-1601-3}}.
* [[Jorge Luis Borges]] and Esther Zemborain de Torres (1971). ''An Introduction to American Literature''. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
* Theodora Bosanquet (1982). ''Henry James at Work''. Haskell House Publishers Inc. pp.&nbsp;275–276. {{ISBN|0-8383-0009-X}}
* John R. Bradley, ed. (1999). ''Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire''. Palgrave Macmillan. {{ISBN|0-312-21764-1}}
* John R. Bradley (2000). I  ''Henry James on Stage and Screen'' Palgrave Macmillan. {{ISBN|0-333-79214-9}}
* John R. Bradley (2000). ''Henry James's Permanent Adolescence''. Palgrave Macmillan. {{ISBN|0-333-91874-6}}
* [[Van Wyck Brooks]] (1925). ''The Pilgrimage of Henry James''
* Gabriel Brownstein (2004). "Introduction," in James, Henry. ''Portrait of a Lady'', Barnes & Noble Classics series, Spark Educational Publishing.
* Lewis Dabney, ed. (1983). ''The Portable [[Edmund Wilson]]''. {{ISBN|0-14-015098-6}}
* Marysa Demoor and Monty Chisholm, editors (1999). ''Bravest of Women and Finest of Friends: Henry James's Letters to Lucy Clifford'', University of Victoria (1999), p.&nbsp;79 {{ISBN|0-920604-67-6}}
* [[F.W. Dupee]] (1951). ''Henry James'' William Sloane Associates, The American Men of Letters Series.
* [[Leon Edel]], ed. (1955). ''The Selected Letters of Henry James''. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Vol. 1
* Leon Edel, ed. (1983). ''Henry James Letters''.
* Leon Edel, ed. (1990). ''The Complete Plays of Henry James''. New York: Oxford University Press.  {{ISBN|0-19-504379-0}}
* [[E.M. Forster]] (1956). ''Aspects of the Novel'' {{ISBN|0-674-38780-5}}
* {{cite book|first1=Susan|last1=Gunter|year=2000|title=Dear Munificent Friends: Henry James's Letters to Four Women|publisher=[[University of Michigan Press]]|isbn=0-472-11010-1}}
* {{cite book|first1=Susan E.|last1=Gunter|first2=Steven H.|last2=Jobe|year=2001|title=Dearly Beloved Friends: Henry James's Letters to Younger Men|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=0-472-11009-8}}
* [[Katrina vanden Heuvel]] (1990). ''The Nation 1865–1990'', [[Thunder's Mouth Press]]. {{ISBN|1-56025-001-1}}
* James Kraft (1969). ''The early tales of Henry James''. Southern Illinois University Press.
* Paul Lauter (2010). [https://books.google.com/books?id=HGSf-VpoGIsC&pg=PA364 ''A companion to American literature and culture'']. Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. p.&nbsp;364. {{ISBN|0-631-20892-5}}
* [[Percy Lubbock]], ed. (1920). ''The Letters of Henry James'', vol. 1. New York: Scribner.
* [[F. O. Matthiessen]] and Kenneth Murdock, editors (1981) ''The Notebooks of Henry James''. University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|0-226-51104-9}}
* {{cite book|first=Sheldon M|last=Novick|year=1996|title=Henry James: The Young Master|publisher=Random House|isbn=0-394-58655-7|url=https://archive.org/details/henryjamesyoungm00novi}}
* Sheldon M. Novick (2007). ''[https://archive.org/details/henryjamesmature00novi Henry James: The Mature Master]''. Random House. {{ISBN|978-0-679-45023-8}}.
* Ross Posnock (1987). "James, Browning, and the Theatrical Self," in Neuman, Mark and Payne, Michael. ''Self, sign, and symbol''. Bucknell University Press.
* {{cite book|first=Lyall H|last=Powers| author-link = Lyall Powers|year=1970|title=Henry James: An Introduction and Interpretation|url=https://archive.org/details/henryjamesintrod0000powe|url-access=registration|location=New York|publisher=Holt, Rinehart and Winston|isbn=978-0030789557}}
* {{interlanguage link|Ignas Skrupskelis|lt}} and Elizabeth Berkeley, editors (1994). ''The Correspondence of William James: Volume 3, William and Henry. 1897–1910''. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
* [[Allan Wade]], ed. (1948). ''Henry James: The Scenic Art, Notes on Acting and the Drama 1872–1901''.
* [[Edward Wagenknecht]] (1983). ''The Novels of Henry James''.
* [[Edith Wharton]] (1925) ''The Writing of Fiction''.
* [[Virginia Woolf]] (2003). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=pn9OzR4AYdsC&pg=PA40 A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf]''. Harcourt.  pp.&nbsp;33, 39–40, 58, 86, 215, 301, 351. {{ISBN|978-0-15-602791-5}}.
* [[H. G. Wells]], Boon. (1915) ''The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump''. London: T. Fisher Unwin p.&nbsp;101.
* Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, ed. (2004). ''Beloved Boy: Letters to Hendrik C. Andersen, 1899–1915''. University of Virginia Press. {{ISBN|0-8139-2270-4}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
{{Library resources box}}

===General===
* ''A Bibliography of Henry James: Third Edition'' by Leon Edel, Dan Laurence and James Rambeau (1982). {{ISBN|1-58456-005-3}}
* ''A Henry James Encyclopedia'' by Robert L. Gale (1989). {{ISBN|0-313-25846-5}}
* ''A Henry James Chronology'' by Edgar F. Harden (2005). {{ISBN|1403942293}}
* ''The Daily Henry James: A Year of Quotes from the Work of the Master''. Edited by Michael Gorra (2016). {{ISBN|978-0-226-40854-5}}
* ''Henry James A Bibliographical Catalogue of Editions to 1921'', 2nd Edition Revised, By David J. Supino, Liverpool U. Press 2014

===Autobiography===
* ''A Small Boy and Others: A Critical Edition'' edited by Peter Collister (2011). {{ISBN|0813930820}}
* ''Notes of a Son and Brother, and the Middle Years: A Critical Edition'' edited by Peter Collister (2011) {{ISBN|0813930847}}
* ''Autobiographies'' edited by Philip Horne (2016). Contains ''A Small Boy and Others'', ''Notes of a Son and Brother'', ''The Middle Years'', other autobiographical writings, and ''Henry James at Work, by Theodora Bosanquet''.  {{ISBN|978-1598534719}}

===Bibliography===
* ''An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Henry James'' by [[Nicola Bradbury]] (Harvester Press, 1987). {{ISBN|978-0710810304}}

===Biography===
* ''Henry James: The Untried Years 1843–1870'' by [[Leon Edel]] (1953)
* ''Henry James: The Conquest of London 1870–1881'' by Leon Edel (1962) {{ISBN|0-380-39651-3}}
* ''Henry James: The Middle Years 1882–1895'' by Leon Edel (1962) {{ISBN|0-380-39669-6}}
* ''Henry James: The Treacherous Years 1895–1901'' by Leon Edel (1969) {{ISBN|0-380-39677-7}}
* ''Henry James: The Master 1901–1916'' by Leon Edel (1972) {{ISBN|0-380-39677-7}}
* ''Henry James: A Life'' by Leon Edel (1985) {{ISBN|0060154594}}. One-volume abridgment of Edel's five-volume biography, listed above.
* ''Henry James: The Young Master'' by Sheldon M. Novick (1996) {{ISBN|0812978838}}
* ''Henry James: The Mature Master'' by Sheldon M. Novick (2007) {{ISBN|0679450238}}
* ''Henry James: The Imagination of Genius'' by [[Fred Kaplan (biographer)|Fred Kaplan]] (1992) {{ISBN|0-688-09021-4}}
* ''A Private Life of Henry James: Two Women and His Art'' by [[Lyndall Gordon]] (1998) {{ISBN|0-393-04711-3}}. Revised edition titled ''Henry James: His Women and His Art'' (2012) {{ISBN|978-1-84408-892-8}}.
* ''The Three Jameses: A Family of Minds: Henry James. Sr., William James, Henry James'' by Clinton Hartley Grattan (1932)
* ''The James Family: A Group Biography'' by [[F. O. Matthiessen]] (1947) (0394742435) {{ISBN|0679450238}}
* ''The Jameses: A Family Narrative'' by [[R. W. B. Lewis]] (1991) {{ISBN|0374178615}}
* ''House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family'' by Paul Fisher (2008) {{ISBN|1616793376}}

===Letters===
* ''Theatre and Friendship'' by Elizabeth Robins. London: Jonathan Cape, 1932.
* ''Henry James: Letters'' edited by Leon Edel (four vols. 1974–1984)
* ''Henry James: A Life in Letters'' edited by Philip Horne (1999) {{ISBN|0-670-88563-0}}
* ''The Complete Letters of Henry James,1855–1872'' edited by Pierre A. Walker and Greg Zacharias (two vols., University of Nebraska Press, 2006)
* ''The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1872–1876'' edited by Pierre A. Walker and Greg W. Zacharias (three vols., University of Nebraska Press, 2008)

===Editions===
* ''Complete Stories 1864–1874'' ([[Jean Strouse]], ed, Library of America, 1999) {{ISBN|978-1-883011-70-3}}
* ''Complete Stories 1874–1884'' (William Vance, ed, Library of America, 1999) {{ISBN|978-1-883011-63-5}}
* ''Complete Stories 1884–1891'' ([[Edward Said]], ed, Library of America, 1999) {{ISBN|978-1-883011-64-2}}
* ''Complete Stories 1892–1898'' ([[John Hollander]], David Bromwich, [[Denis Donoghue (academic)|Denis Donoghue]], eds, Library of America, 1996) {{ISBN|978-1-883011-09-3}}
* ''Complete Stories 1898–1910'' (John Hollander, David Bromwich, Denis Donoghue, eds, Library of America, 1996) {{ISBN|978-1-883011-10-9}}
* '' Novels 1871–1880: Watch and Ward, Roderick Hudson, The American, The Europeans, Confidence'' (William T. Stafford, ed., [[Library of America]], 1983) {{ISBN|978-0-940450-13-4}}
* ''Novels 1881–1886: Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians'' (William T. Stafford, ed, Library of America, 1985) {{ISBN|978-0-940450-30-1}}
* ''Novels 1886–1890: The Princess Casamassima, The Reverberator, The Tragic Muse'' (Daniel Mark Fogel, ed, Library of America, 1989) {{ISBN|978-0-940450-56-1}}
* ''Novels 1896–1899: The Other House, The Spoils of Poynton, What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age'' (Myra Jehlen, ed, Library of America, 2003) {{ISBN|978-1-931082-30-3}}
* ''Novels 1901–1902: The Sacred Fount, The Wings of the Dove'' ([[Leo Bersani]], ed, Library of America, 2006) {{ISBN|978-1-931082-88-4}}
* ''Collected Travel Writings, Great Britain and America: English Hours; The American Scene; Other Travels'' edited by Richard Howard (Library of America, 1993) {{ISBN|978-0-940450-76-9}}
* ''Collected Travel Writings, The Continent: A Little Tour in France, Italian Hours, Other Travels'' edited by Richard Howard (Library of America, 1993) {{ISBN|0-940450-77-1}}
* ''Literary Criticism Volume One: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers'' edited by Leon Edel and Mark Wilson (Library of America, 1984) {{ISBN|978-0-940450-22-6}}
* ''Literary Criticism Volume Two: French Writers, Other European Writers, The Prefaces to the New York Edition'' edited by Leon Edel and Mark Wilson (Library of America, 1984) {{ISBN|978-0-940450-23-3}}
* ''The Complete Notebooks of Henry James'' edited by Leon Edel and Lyall Powers (1987) {{ISBN|0-19-503782-0}}
* ''The Complete Plays of Henry James'' edited by Leon Edel (1991) {{ISBN|0195043790}}
* ''Henry James: Autobiography'' edited by F.W. Dupee (1956)
* ''The American: an Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism'' edited by James Tuttleton (1978) {{ISBN|0-393-09091-4}}
* ''The Ambassadors: An Authoritative Text, The Author on the Novel, Criticism'' edited by S.P. Rosenbaum (1994) {{ISBN|0-393-96314-4}}
* ''The Turn of the Screw: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism'' edited by Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren (1999) {{ISBN|0-393-95904-X}}
* ''The Portrait of a Lady: An Authoritative Text, Henry James and the Novel, Reviews and Criticism'' edited by Robert Bamberg (2003) {{ISBN|0-393-96646-1}}
* ''The Wings of the Dove: Authoritative Text, The Author and the Novel, Criticism'' edited by J. Donald Crowley and Richard Hocks (2003) {{ISBN|0-393-97881-8}}
* ''Tales of Henry James: The Texts of the Tales, the Author on His Craft, Criticism'' edited by Christof Wegelin and Henry Wonham (2003) {{ISBN|0-393-97710-2}}
* ''The Portable Henry James'', New Edition edited by John Auchard (2004) {{ISBN|0-14-243767-0}}
* ''Henry James on Culture: Collected Essays on Politics and the American Social Scene'' edited by Pierre Walker (1999) {{ISBN|0-8032-2589-X}}

===Criticism===
* ''The Novels of Henry James'' by [[Oscar Cargill]] (1961)
* ''Henry James: the later novels'' by [[Nicola Bradbury]] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979)
* ''The Tales of Henry James'' by Edward Wagenknecht (1984) {{ISBN|0-8044-2957-X}}
* ''Modern Critical Views: Henry James'' edited by [[Harold Bloom]] (1987) {{ISBN|0-87754-696-7}}
* ''Henry James. The Contingencies of Style'' by [[Mary Cross]] (1993) {{ISBN|0-333-57426-5}}
* ''A Companion to Henry James Studies'' edited by Daniel Mark Fogel (1993) {{ISBN|0-313-25792-2}}
* ''Henry James's Europe: Heritage and Transfer'' edited by Dennis Tredy, Annick Duperray and Adrian Harding (2011) {{ISBN|978-1-906924-36-2}}
* ''Echec et écriture. Essai sur les nouvelles de Henry James'' by Annick Duperray (1992)
* ''Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays'' edited by [[Ruth Yeazell]] (1994) {{ISBN|0-13-380973-0}}
* ''The Cambridge Companion to Henry James'' edited by Jonathan Freedman (1998) {{ISBN|0-521-49924-0}}
* ''The Novel Art: Elevations of American Fiction after Henry James'' by [[Mark McGurl]] (2001) {{ISBN|0-691-08899-3}}
* ''Henry James and the Visual'' by Kendall Johnson (2007) {{ISBN|0-521-88066-1}}
* ''False Positions: The Representational Logics of Henry James's Fiction''. by [[Julie Rivkin]]. (1996) {{ISBN|0-8047-2617-5}}
* 'Henry James's Critique of the Beautiful Life,' by R.R. Reno in [[Azure (journal)|Azure]], Spring 2010, [http://azure.org.il/article.php?id=537]
* ''Approaches to Teaching Henry James's Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw'' edited by Kimberly C. Reed and Peter G. Beidler (2005) {{ISBN|0-87352-921-9}}
* ''Henry James and Modern Moral Life'' by [[Robert B. Pippin]] (1999) {{ISBN|0-521-65230-8}}
* ''"Friction with the Market": Henry James and the Profession of Authorship'' by Michael Anesko (1986) {{ISBN|0-19-504034-1}}

==External links==
{{sister project links|s=Author:Henry James|commons=Category:Henry James|d=Q170509|b=no|v=no|voy=no|species=no|m=no|mw=no|n=no|wikt=no}}
* [https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/1825 Henry James Collection] at the [[Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library|Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library]]
* [https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadID=00687 Henry James Collection] at the [[Harry Ransom Center]]
* [https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078943 Henry James Letters] at [[Columbia University]]
* [https://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathawar/ The Henry James Scholar's Guide to Web Sites]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20040829095638/http://www.henryjames.org.uk/ The Ladder – a Henry James Web Site] (archived)
* [https://mantex.co.uk/category/tutorials/19c-authors/henry-james/ Henry James Archive – Mantex] 
* {{IMDb name|0416556|Henry James}}

===Electronic editions===
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/henry-james}}
* {{Gutenberg author | id=113 | name=Henry James}}
* {{FadedPage|id=James, Henry|name=Henry James|author=yes}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Henry James |sopt=t}}
* {{Librivox author |id=117}}
* {{OL author|id=OL2630682A}}
* [https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/coll/128.html The Henry James Collection] From the [https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/ Rare Book and Special Collections Division] at the [[Library of Congress]]

{{Henry James|state=expanded}}
{{The Turn of the Screw}}
{{Washington Square}}
{{The Wings of the Dove}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:James, Henry}}
[[Category:Henry James| ]]
[[Category:1843 births]]
[[Category:1916 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century American novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century American novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:American male novelists]]
[[Category:American people of Irish descent]]
[[Category:American people of Scottish descent]]
[[Category:American psychological fiction writers]]
[[Category:American ghost story writers]]
[[Category:Members of the Order of Merit]]
[[Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:People from Greenwich Village]]
[[Category:Writers from Manhattan]]
[[Category:The Nation (U.S. magazine) people]]
[[Category:Victorian novelists]]
[[Category:Writers of Gothic fiction]]
[[Category:American weird fiction writers]]
[[Category:People from Rye, East Sussex]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]
[[Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters]]
[[Category:Family of Henry James|Henry]]