Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Sixth edition, Oxford University Press, 2000.
Henry James
-
Standard Name: James, Henry
HJ
(who began publishing in 1871 and continued into the twentieth century) left his native USA to settle in England early in his writing career. Known for his extreme subtlety, verging at times on obscurity,
"Henry James, c. 1900" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Photo_of_Henry_James.jpg.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Literary responses | Louisa May Alcott | In a review of Moods, Henry James
panned LMA
's ignorance of human nature, but did acknowledge a degree of cleverness in the author and a great deal of beauty in the writing. James, Henry. “Review of Moods, 1865”. Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott, edited by Madeleine B. Stern, G. K. Hall, 1984, pp. 69-73. 73 |
| Literary responses | Patricia Highsmith | Critic Bob Wake
discusses Highsmith's complex point-of-view techniques—a literary style begun by Henry James
—and her modelling The Talented Mr Ripley on his novel The Ambassadors (1903). He notes her humorous plays on the James... |
| Literary responses | Ruth Prawer Jhabvala | Updike
again complained about RPJ
's refusal of sympathy to her characters. Robert Towers
went further: linking this with Jhabvala's gender and (British) nationality, he accused her of revelling in her characters' discomfiture and degradation... |
| Literary responses | Willa Cather | This volume was badly received. Cather sent a copy to Henry James
, whom at this date she much admired. As Tillie Olsen
later pointed out indignantly, he never replied. To an enquiry from a... |
| Literary responses | Anita Brookner | There was some astonishment in the media when this novel won the Booker Prize (although it was up against J. G. Ballard
's Empire of the Sun. The book itself significantly boosted AB
's literary... |
| Literary responses | Sara Jeannette Duncan | SJD
sent a copy of this work to Henry James
, who replied: I think your drama lacks a little line—bony structure and palpable, as it were, tense cord—on which to string the pearls of... |
| Literary responses | Alice Meynell | This collection moved the Times Literary Supplement to declare that its delicacy—of scrupulousness, balance, fineness, skill—is as rare in life and in art as ever it was. qtd. in Badeni, June. The Slender Tree: A Life of Alice Meynell. Tabb House, 1981. 222-3 |
| Literary responses | Anita Brookner | Reviewer Dinah Birch
discerned in this book and in AB
's work generally severe taste conceal[ing] an expansively James
ian aestheticism. Birch, Dinah. “Wintry Lessons”. London Review of Books, 27 June 2002, pp. 30-1. 30 |
| Literary responses | Sarah Waters | Waters says that while some of her lesbian readers felt angry or let down by her writing a book without lesbian content, this was the book that my 10-year-old self was destined to write. qtd. in Allardice, Lisa. “Sarah Waters: ’Some of my readers really did hate me. They felt let down’”. theguardian.com, 15 Sept. 2018. |
| Literary responses | Elizabeth Gaskell | Reviews were extremely positive. Most expressed a sense of loss to English letters at EG
's recent death, and compared Wives and Daughters to her other well-loved book, Cranford. The Athenæum likened the style... |
| Literary responses | Beryl Bainbridge | Publishers rejecting the work had called the central characters repulsive beyond belief. qtd. in Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990. |
| Literary responses | Mary Augusta Ward | The novel prompted Henry James
to write to MAW
as a critic. They had met previously, and, indeed, the visit to the theatre that inspired the novel was made in his company. However, it was... |
| Literary responses | George Egerton | Both lauded and lambasted, GE
was a sexually radical writer who challenged English reserve and literary reticence through the directness of her treatment of female desire. Ledger, Sally. The New Woman. Manchester University Press, 1997. 188 |
| Literary responses | Sybille Bedford | Nancy Mitford
called A Legacyone of the very best novels I've ever read. Bedford, Sybille. Jigsaw. Penguin, 1999. prelims qtd. in Dirda, Michael. “Sips from the finest vintage”. Guardian Weekly, 1–7 July 2005, p. 25. 25 |
| Literary responses | Mary Augusta Ward | Henry James
disliked this tale. It was well received by reviewers; the Critic hailed MAW
as the greatest woman novelist of her day. qtd. in Sutherland, John, b. 1938. Mrs. Humphry Ward. Clarendon Press, 1990. 151 Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York University Press, 1970. 167 |
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