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Henry C James (1902-1989), real name William Henry Constable James [1] was an Australian writer who wrote films, books, radio, stage plays, musicals and documentaries. [citation needed] . He moved from Melbourne to London in the 1930s where his play The Golden Gander was produced on stage.
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Dec 20, 2023 · Of his more than 20 novels, dozens of story collections and novellas and volumes of criticism, letters, essays and poems, these are the most essential books to read to understand the great legacy...
- Lauren Christensen
- Overview
- Early life and works
- Career—first phase
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).
Where did Henry James grow up?
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.
When did Henry James become a writer?
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.
How did Henry James influence the development of the novel?
Henry James was named for his father, a prominent social theorist and lecturer, and was the younger brother of the pragmatist philosopher William James. The young Henry was a shy, book-addicted boy who assumed the role of quiet observer beside his active elder brother. They were taken abroad as infants, were schooled by tutors and governesses, and spent their preadolescent years in Manhattan. Returned to Geneva, Paris, and London during their teens, the James children acquired languages and an awareness of Europe vouchsafed to few Americans in their times. On the eve of the American Civil War, the James family settled at Newport, Rhode Island, and there, and later in Boston, Henry came to know New England intimately. When he was 19 years of age, he enrolled at the Harvard Law School, but he devoted his study time to reading Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Honoré de Balzac, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. His first story appeared anonymously two years later in the New York Continental Monthly and his first book reviews in the North American Review. When William Dean Howells became editor of The Atlantic Monthly, James found in him a friend and mentor who published him regularly. Between them, James and Howells inaugurated the era of American “realism.”
By his mid-20s James was regarded as one of the most skillful writers of short stories in America. Critics, however, deplored his tendency to write of the life of the mind, rather than of action. The stories of these early years show the leisurely existence of the well-to-do at Newport and Saratoga. James’s apprenticeship was thorough. He wrote stories, reviews, and articles for almost a decade before he attempted a full-length novel. There had to be also the traditional “grand tour,” and James went abroad for his first adult encounter with Europe in 1869. His year’s wandering in England, France, and Italy set the stage for a lifetime of travel in those countries. James never married. By nature he was friendly and even gregarious, but, while he was an active observer and participant in society, he tended, until late middle age, to be “distant” in his relations with people and was careful to avoid “involvement.”
Recognizing the appeal of Europe, given his cosmopolitan upbringing, James made a deliberate effort to discover whether he could live and work in the United States. Two years in Boston, two years in Europe, mainly in Rome, and a winter of unremitting hackwork in New York City convinced him that he could write better and live more cheaply abroad. Thus began his long expatriation—heralded by publication in 1875 of the novel Roderick Hudson, the story of an American sculptor’s struggle by the banks of the Tiber between his art and his passions; Transatlantic Sketches, his first collection of travel writings; and a collection of tales. With these three substantial books, he inaugurated a career that saw about 100 volumes through the press during the next 40 years.
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During 1875–76 James lived in Paris, writing literary and topical letters for the New York Tribune and working on his novel The American (1877), the story of a self-made American millionaire whose guileless and forthright character contrasts with that of the arrogant and cunning family of French aristocrats whose daughter he unsuccessfully attempts to marry. In Paris James sought out the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, whose work appealed to him, and through Turgenev was brought into Gustave Flaubert’s coterie, where he got to know Edmond de Goncourt, Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Guy de Maupassant. From Turgenev he received confirmation of his own view that a novelist need not worry about “story” and that, in focusing on character, he would arrive at the life experience of his protagonist.
Much as he liked France, James felt that he would be an eternal outsider there, and late in 1876 he crossed to London. There, in small rooms in Bolton Street off Piccadilly, he wrote the major fiction of his middle years. In 1878 he achieved international renown with his story of an American flirt in Rome, Daisy Miller, and further advanced his reputation with The Europeans that same year. In England he was promptly taken up by the leading Victorians and became a regular at Lord Houghton’s breakfasts, where he consorted with Alfred Tennyson, William Gladstone, Robert Browning, and others. A great social lion, James dined out 140 times during 1878 and 1879 and visited in many of the great Victorian houses and country seats. He was elected to London clubs, published his stories simultaneously in English and American periodicals, and mingled with George Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edmund Gosse, and other writers, thus establishing himself as a significant figure in Anglo-American literary and artistic relations.
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- Leon Edel
Henry C. James has written works for children, travel writing and fiction. In 1979 he published Western Australia : A Pictorial Parade of 150 Years. He has also written scripts for radio, film and television, and plays for the stage.
Henry James and the American Idea. The Atlantic Monthly helped establish the expatriate author as a literary great. Susan Goodman. HUMANITIES, July/August 2011, Volume 32, Number 4. Photo caption. Of the many contributors who supported and found support from the Atlantic Monthly, Henry James stands apart.
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Henry James OM ( 15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) 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.
