A Historical Guide to Henry James
John Carlos Rowe and Eric Haralson
Abstract
The New York City-born Henry James (1843–1916)—eminent novelist, amateur psychologist, inveterate bachelor—epitomizes, to many, the turn-of-the-century literary observer of social mores. His shrewd portraits of upper-class Anglo-American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries distilled the differences between the Old World and the New World, the rise of American entrepreneurship, and an aesthetically charged European sensibility. With fictional works like Washington Square, The Turn of the Screw, and The Portrait of a Lady, he displayed characters of great psychological d ... More
The New York City-born Henry James (1843–1916)—eminent novelist, amateur psychologist, inveterate bachelor—epitomizes, to many, the turn-of-the-century literary observer of social mores. His shrewd portraits of upper-class Anglo-American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries distilled the differences between the Old World and the New World, the rise of American entrepreneurship, and an aesthetically charged European sensibility. With fictional works like Washington Square, The Turn of the Screw, and The Portrait of a Lady, he displayed characters of great psychological depth, careful narrative detail, and distinctly vivid prose. With a brief biography, concise bibliographical chapter, and six chapters devoted to cultural context that defined him, this book offers a primer to the author's fiction and the cultural milieu that influenced him.
Keywords:
fiction,
New York,
Henry James,
upper-class Anglo-American society,
Old World,
New World,
entrepreneurship,
social mores
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195121353 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195121353.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
John Carlos Rowe, editor
University of Southern California, Professor of English
Eric Haralson, editor
Stonybrook University, Associate Professor of English
More
Less
