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.

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
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
Dixon Scott wrote in the Liverpool Courier...
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.
Hilary Mantel
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.
Susannah Clapp has called it as powerful an account of corruption as Henry JamesThe Turn of the Screw . . . . sleek but...
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
But after all her popularity and notoriety at...
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 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
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
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.