Letters From the Palazzo Barbaro

About Henry James

Henry James (1843-1916) is one of the most prominent figures of American and British Literature. Son of a clergyman and brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James he moved between America and Europe during his early life eventually settling in England at the age of twenty. A prolific novelist essayist and literary critic James was much concerned with questions of identity belonging creativity and consciousness. He is perhaps most famous for his novels The Bostonians The Portrait of a Lady Daisy Miller and What Maisie Knew and for his ghost story The Turn of the Screw. Between 1906 and 1910 James revised much of his fiction for the so-called New York Edition of his complete works adding now-famous Prefaces. In 1915 prompted by the First World War he became a British citizen; he received the Order of Merit in 1916 shortly before his death.