Tag: Henry James

  • Henry James Meets Proust’s Characters

    One of the pleasures of reading literary biographies is learning what happened when famous “writer A” met famous “writer B” for the first time. Some of the great encounters are a young James Joyce meeting W.B. Yeats (or later Samuel Beckett meeting Joyce), Oscar Wilde hiding in the Proust family bathroom, because Marcel was late, and Wilde couldn’t deal with…

  • Interview with New Henry James Biographer

    Henry James is the novelist whose writing straddles two centuries as well as two continents. He was an American by birth, English by residence and a European in his sensibilities.  It’s generally agreed that the definitive James biography is Leon Edel’s five-volume work (I myself have the one-volume abridged version, fearing I might miss out on an entire…

  • A Few Gems from Henry James

    To move from a contemporary novel to a book by Henry James is like leaving a meadow and stepping into an ancient bamboo grove where the surroundings are undoubtedly exquisite, but the trees are packed together, and if you’re careless, you’ll quickly lose your way. Henry James’ The Ambassadors (1903) is stocked with gems worthy…