Henry James (1843–1916) was an American-born writer who settled in England and became one of the great novelists of the transition to modernism. The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw and The Ambassadors study the meeting of Americans and Europeans with unrivalled subtlety.
Works
The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw
An American cosmopolitan
Henry James was born in New York on 15 April 1843, into a wealthy and intellectual family; his elder brother William became a famous philosopher and psychologist. His father took the children through Europe for their education, to schools and tutors in Geneva, Paris and London.
After a brief attempt at studying law at Harvard, he began publishing stories and reviews in American magazines in the 1860s.
Settling in Europe
In 1875 he moved to Paris, where he met Flaubert, Turgenev and Zola, then in 1876 to London, which became his home. Daisy Miller (1878), about a spirited young American woman in Europe, was his first great success.
The Portrait of a Lady (1881) told the story of Isabel Archer, an independent young American who inherits a fortune and makes a disastrous marriage. In the 1890s he tried to succeed in the theatre; the failure of his play Guy Domville in 1895 hurt him deeply, and he returned to fiction.
The late style
From 1897 he lived at Lamb House in Rye, Sussex, dictating his books to a typist. The Turn of the Screw (1898), The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl, written in a dense and nuanced style, mark his late period.
In 1915, in protest against the United States' neutrality in the First World War, he became a British subject. He received the Order of Merit shortly before his death in London on 28 February 1916.
Anecdotes
Dictating his novels
From the late 1890s James suffered from pains in his wrist and dictated his work to a typist. Some critics link the long, winding sentences of his late novels to this habit of composing aloud.
Booed on stage
At the first night of his play Guy Domville in January 1895, James came on stage at the end and was booed by part of the audience. He wrote no more for the theatre for many years.
Frequently asked questions
What is The Turn of the Screw about?
A young governess in charge of two children at a country house becomes convinced that they are haunted by the ghosts of two former servants. Whether the ghosts are real is left open.
Was Henry James British or American?
He was born American and became a British subject in 1915, the year before his death.
What is the 'international theme'?
The meeting of Americans and Europeans, the innocence of the New World facing the experience of the Old, which runs through many of James's novels.