Henry James

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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 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.
Hilary Mantel
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 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...
Literary responses Mary Augusta Ward
James 's admiring response admitted his own irresistible urge to recast the novels of other people. He also opined to MAW that you had done nothing more homogeneous, nor more hanging and moving together. It...
Friends, Associates Mary Augusta Ward
She met a number of important writers through her newspaper work. She associated with Alexander Macmillan , Sir George Grove , Edmund Gosse and his wife Ellen , John Morley , and her uncle Matthew Arnold
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...
Reception Mary Augusta Ward
The novel was a massive success, in the words of Henry Jamesa momentous public event.
qtd. in
Ward, Mary Augusta. “Introduction”. Robert Elsmere, edited by Rosemary Ashton, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. vii - xviii.
vii
Critic John Sutherland deems it the best-selling work of quality fiction in the nineteenth century. By the summer...
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
Novels adapted by MW are not restricted to those by women. Works by male writers she has revised for broadcasting include Kipps by H. G. Wells , aired on Radio 4 in 1984 and runner-up...
Family and Intimate relationships Iris Tree
Writer, critic, and caricaturist Sir Max Beerbohm was IT 's half-uncle, the youngest son from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's father's second marriage. Best remembered for his drawings and caricatures of the famous, Beerbohm also wrote...
Textual Production Emma Tennant
For Felony: The Private History of The Aspern Papers: A Novel, ET used Henry James 's friendship with Constance Fenimore Woolson , and Mary Shelley 's stepsister Claire Clairmont as source for his novel.
“Emma Tennant”. Fantastic Fiction.
Textual Production Emma Tennant
ET further pursued her interest in Henry James by publishing a novel which constitutes a sustained allusion to The Turn of the Screw. She titled it The Beautiful Child.
Wilson, Frances. “The Beautiful Child by Emma Tennant, review”. The Telegraph, 17 Dec. 2012.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Emma Tennant
ET imagines that James in The Aspern Papers has done what she herself is doing: fictionalizing an actual situation from literary history. Part of the novel moves back from the later to the earlier nineteenth...
Friends, Associates Harriet Beecher Stowe
HBS developed a friendship with Oliver Wendell Holmes . She also gained notoriety by supporting a young writer named Anna Dickinson who caused a sensation by writing a novel which defended interracial marriage. This led...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Stevenson
She found motherhood a struggle. She tried to keep up her serious reading (James , Hardy , Proust ) while breast-feeding, and to serve an elegant candlelit supper each evening while the baby cried...
Textual Features Gertrude Stein
As well as landscape, she also meditates here on space, literature, democracy, superstition, propaganda, national belonging, and identity. (The old woman said I am I because my little dog knows me, but the dog...

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Texts

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