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JAMES, HENRY (1843— )

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Originally appearing in Volume V15, Page 144 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JAMES, See also:HENRY (1843— ) , See also:American author, was See also:born in New See also:York on the 15th of See also:April 1843. His See also:father was Henry James (1811-1882), a theological writer of See also:great originality, from whom both he and his See also:brother See also:Professor See also:William James derived their psychological subtlety and their idiomatic, picturesque See also:English. Most of Henry's boyhood was spent in See also:Europe, where he studied under tutors in See also:England, See also:France and See also:Switzerland. In 186o he returned to See also:America, and began See also:reading See also:law at Harvard, only to find speedily that literature, not law, was what he most cared for. His earliest See also:short See also:tale, " The See also:Story of a See also:Year," appeared in 1865, in the See also:Atlantic Monthly, and frequent stories and sketches followed. In 1869 he again went to Europe, where he subsequently made his See also:home, for the most See also:part living in See also:London, or at See also:Rye in See also:Sussex. Among his specially noteworthy See also:works are the following: See also:Watch and See also:Ward (1871); See also:Roderick See also:Hudson (1875); The American (1877) ; See also:Daisy See also:Miller (1878) ; See also:French Poets and Novelists (1878) ; A See also:Life of See also:Hawthorne (1879); The Portrait of a See also:Lady (1881) ; Portraits of Places (1884) ; The Bostonians (1886); Partial Portraits (1888); The Tragic Muse (18go); Essays in London (1893) ; The Two Magics (1898); The Awkward See also:Age (1898); The Wings of the See also:Dove (1902); The Ambassadors (1903) ; The See also:Golden Bowl (1904) English See also:Hours (19o5); The American See also:Scene (1907); The High Bid (1909); See also:Italian Hours (1909) As a novelist, Henry James is a See also:modern of the moderns both in subject See also:matter and in method. He is entirely loyal to contemporary life and reverentially exact in his transcription of the phase. His characters are for the most part See also:people of the See also:world who conceive of life as a See also:fine See also:art and have the leisure to carry out their theories. Rarely are they at See also:close quarters with any ugly See also:practical task. They are subtle and complex with the subtlety and the complexity that come from conscious preoccupation with themselves. They are specialists in conduct and past masters in See also:casuistry, and are full of See also:variations and shadows of turning.

Moreover, they are finely expressive of milieu; each belongs unmistakably to his class and his See also:

race; each is true to inherited moral traditions and delicately illustrative of some social See also:code. To reveal the See also:power and the tragedy of life through so many minutely limiting and apparently artificial conditions, and by means of characters who are somewhat self-conscious and are See also:apt to make of life only a pleasant pastime, might well seem an impossible task. Yet it is precisely in this that Henry James is pre-eminently successful. The essentially human is what he really cares for, however much he may at times seem preoccupied with the technique of his art or with the See also:mask of conventions through which he makes the essentially human reveal itself. Nor has " the vista of the spiritual been denied him." No more poignant spiritual tragedy has been recounted in See also:recent fiction than the story of See also:Isabel See also:Archer in The Portrait of a Lady. His method, too, is as modern as his subject matter. He See also:early `ell in love with the " point of view," and the See also:good and the See also:bad qualities of his See also:work all follow from this See also:literary See also:passion. He is a very sensitive impressionist, with a technique that can See also:fix the most elusive phase of See also:character and render the most baffling See also:surface. The skill is unending with • which he places his characters in such relations and under such See also:lights that they flash out in due See also:succession their continuously varying facets. At times he may seem to forget that a character is something incalculably more than the sum of all its phases; and then his characters tend to have their existence, as Positivists expect to have their See also:immortality, simply and solely in the minds of other people. But when his method is at its best, the delicate phases of character that he transcribes coalesce perfectly into clearly defined and suggestive images of living, acting men and See also:women. Doubt-less, there is a certain See also:initiation necessary for the enjoyment of Mr James.

He presupposes a See also:

cosmopolitan outlook, a certain See also:interest in art and in social artifice, and no little abstract curiosity about the workings of the human mechanism. But for speculative readers, for readers who care for art in life as well as for life in art, and for readers above all who want to encounter and comprehend a great variety of very modern and finely modulated characters, Mr James holds a See also:place of his own, unrivalled as an interpreter of the world of to-See also:day. For a See also:list of the short stories of Mr Henry James, collections of them in See also:volume See also:form, and other works, see See also:bibliographies by F. A. See also:King, in The Novels of Henry James, by Elisabeth L. See also:Cary (New York and London, 19o5), and by Le See also:Roy See also:Phillips, A Bibliography of the Writings of Henry James (See also:Boston, See also:Mass., 1906). In 1909 an edition de luxe of Henry James's novels was published in 24 volumes.

End of Article: JAMES, HENRY (1843— )

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