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,
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Sixth edition, Oxford University Press, 2000.
he was hugely influential as a novelist, short-story writer, and critic. His also wrote plays, which, however, were unsuccessful on stage.
Henry James in a black-and-white photo by William M. Vander Weyde. James is seen full-face, looking forward and to the left, wearing a formal suit, with bald head slightly tilted.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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.
Susannah Clapp has called it as powerful an account of corruption as Henry JamesThe Turn of the Screw . . . . sleek but...
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
But after all her popularity and notoriety at...
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 Sybille Bedford
Nancy Mitford called A Legacyone of the very best novels I've ever read.
Bedford, Sybille. Jigsaw. Penguin, 1999.
prelims
Evelyn Waugh called it entirely delicious . . . cool . . . elegant.
qtd. in
Dirda, Michael. “Sips from the finest vintage”. Guardian Weekly, 1–7 July 2005, p. 25.
25
Reviewing a reprint for the...
Literary responses Dinah Mulock Craik
John Halifax was in such demand that DMC 's publishers, Hurst and Blackett , went through four sets of plates by 1858, and many other publishers put out editions on both sides of the Atlantic...
Literary responses George Eliot
John Morley , anonymously in the Saturday Review, noted that [o]ne of the puzzles, which runs pathetically through Felix Holt as through Romola and the The Mill on the Floss, is the evil...
Literary responses Violet Hunt
To varying degrees, critics have valued VH 's recollections of artistic contemporaries more than her style or other aspects of the memoirs. In a brief review in the Nation and Athenæum on 20 March 1926,...
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
Literary responses Dinah Mulock Craik
Sally Mitchell characterizes it as embarrassing to read
Mitchell, Sally. Dinah Mulock Craik. Twayne, 1983.
64
owing to its sentimentality, but argues that the idealized portrait of a crippled man whose noble life it delineates makes physical disability a powerful figure for...
Literary responses Ethel Sidgwick
ES 's interest in the interaction of different national cultures, and in the issue of what it means to be English, caused some commentators to liken her to Henry James . R. Brimley Johnson in...
Literary responses George Eliot
This work was quite well reviewed, though Richard Holt Hutton wrote that GE found verse a fetter, and not a stimulus,
qtd. in
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
294
and Henry James declared in the North American Review that it was not...
Literary responses Margaret Oliphant
It is almost impossible to calculate MO 's lifetime earnings as an author: she used various different publishers, and borrowed money from them as well as waiting to be paid. But it seems from the...
Literary responses Ethel Wilson
Positive reviews praised EW 's masterful description of the B.C. interior. A reviewer in the Chicago Sunday Tribune wrote: Rarely in recent reading have I encountered an author who has transferred her love and understanding...
Literary responses Elizabeth Inchbald
A Simple Story was praised by no less a modern authority than Q. D. Leavis ,
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
(8 September 1989): 964
and received a more recent accolade from Terry Castle as the most elegant English fiction...
Literary responses Mary Augusta Ward
MAW 's meticulous character study and tragic love story is sometimes considered her best novel. It was positively received by George Meredith , Sir J. M. Barrie , and Henry James. James wrote to her...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.