Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American author who became a British citizen in the last year of his life. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism. His novels deal with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language.
About Henry James in brief
Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American author who became a British citizen in the last year of his life. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism. His novels deal with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912 and 1916. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of renowned philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. His first published work was About A Tragedy, published in 1863, a year later he wrote The Portrait of a Lady. His later works were increasingly experimental. He wrote a number of other highly regarded ghost stories and is considered one of the greatest masters of the field. James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. He had a stutter, which seems to have manifested itself only when he spoke English; in French, he did not stutter. In the autumn of 1861 Henry received an injury, probably to his back, while fighting a fire. This injury resurfaced throughout his life, which made him unfit for military service in the American Civil War. In 1864, James moved to Boston to be near William William James, who had enrolled in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard.
In 1862 Henry attended Harvard Law School, but realised that he was not interested in law. He pursued his interest in literature and associated with authors and critics William Dean Howells and Charles Eliot Norton in Boston and Cambridge, the future Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. James later called Balzac his \”greatest master,\” and said that he had learned more about the craft of fiction from him than from anyone else. He died in London in 1916, one year before his death, and was buried at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, where he had lived with his wife, Alice James, for the last 30 years of her life. His last novel, The Wings of the Dove, was published in 1913, and has been adapted into numerous films and TV shows, including The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, and The Lord of the Flies. He also wrote a series of plays, including Miss Mitchell, about the life of Maggie Fanchon, a stage performance by Maggie Mitchell, who was his first professional mentor. James also wrote several short stories, many of which have been turned into plays. His most famous work is The Turn Of the Screw, which has been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Spanish and Italian. He lived in Newport, Rhode Island, from 1855 to 1860. His father sold the house at Washington Place and took the family to Europe, where they lived for a time in a cottage in Windsor Great Park in England. James’ father was a lecturer and philosopher.
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This page is based on the article Henry James published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 04, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
