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1663 Words7 Pages. ”The so-called international theme is a major theme in Henry James ' work - in his fiction and non-fiction, in his novels and stories, and in his more, as well as less, accomplished texts: the American who is longing for Europe, or just to get away from America, and who walks museum galleries of the major cultural capitals ...
- Overview
- Early life and works
- Career—first phase
Henry James was an American novelist and critic. During his lifetime he wrote 20 novels, 112 tales, and 12 plays in addition to several volumes of travel writing and criticism. Today he is best remembered as the author of the novel The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and the novella The Turn of the Screw (1898).
Where did Henry James grow up?
Henry James was born on April 15, 1843, in New York City. James was a well-traveled youth. As a teenager, he visited Geneva, Paris, and London. Just before the American Civil War, the James family moved to New England. Before pursuing a career as a writer, James briefly attended Harvard Law School.
When did Henry James become a writer?
Henry James’s first short story, “A Tragedy of Error,” was published anonymously in The Continental Monthly in 1864. Shortly thereafter James befriended William Dean Howells, editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Howells published him regularly, and by his mid-20s James was widely considered one of the most skillful writers of short stories in America.
How did Henry James influence the development of the novel?
Henry James was named for his father, a prominent social theorist and lecturer, and was the younger brother of the pragmatist philosopher William James. The young Henry was a shy, book-addicted boy who assumed the role of quiet observer beside his active elder brother. They were taken abroad as infants, were schooled by tutors and governesses, and spent their preadolescent years in Manhattan. Returned to Geneva, Paris, and London during their teens, the James children acquired languages and an awareness of Europe vouchsafed to few Americans in their times. On the eve of the American Civil War, the James family settled at Newport, Rhode Island, and there, and later in Boston, Henry came to know New England intimately. When he was 19 years of age, he enrolled at the Harvard Law School, but he devoted his study time to reading Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Honoré de Balzac, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. His first story appeared anonymously two years later in the New York Continental Monthly and his first book reviews in the North American Review. When William Dean Howells became editor of The Atlantic Monthly, James found in him a friend and mentor who published him regularly. Between them, James and Howells inaugurated the era of American “realism.”
By his mid-20s James was regarded as one of the most skillful writers of short stories in America. Critics, however, deplored his tendency to write of the life of the mind, rather than of action. The stories of these early years show the leisurely existence of the well-to-do at Newport and Saratoga. James’s apprenticeship was thorough. He wrote stories, reviews, and articles for almost a decade before he attempted a full-length novel. There had to be also the traditional “grand tour,” and James went abroad for his first adult encounter with Europe in 1869. His year’s wandering in England, France, and Italy set the stage for a lifetime of travel in those countries. James never married. By nature he was friendly and even gregarious, but, while he was an active observer and participant in society, he tended, until late middle age, to be “distant” in his relations with people and was careful to avoid “involvement.”
Recognizing the appeal of Europe, given his cosmopolitan upbringing, James made a deliberate effort to discover whether he could live and work in the United States. Two years in Boston, two years in Europe, mainly in Rome, and a winter of unremitting hackwork in New York City convinced him that he could write better and live more cheaply abroad. Thus began his long expatriation—heralded by publication in 1875 of the novel Roderick Hudson, the story of an American sculptor’s struggle by the banks of the Tiber between his art and his passions; Transatlantic Sketches, his first collection of travel writings; and a collection of tales. With these three substantial books, he inaugurated a career that saw about 100 volumes through the press during the next 40 years.
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During 1875–76 James lived in Paris, writing literary and topical letters for the New York Tribune and working on his novel The American (1877), the story of a self-made American millionaire whose guileless and forthright character contrasts with that of the arrogant and cunning family of French aristocrats whose daughter he unsuccessfully attempts to marry. In Paris James sought out the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, whose work appealed to him, and through Turgenev was brought into Gustave Flaubert’s coterie, where he got to know Edmond de Goncourt, Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Guy de Maupassant. From Turgenev he received confirmation of his own view that a novelist need not worry about “story” and that, in focusing on character, he would arrive at the life experience of his protagonist.
Much as he liked France, James felt that he would be an eternal outsider there, and late in 1876 he crossed to London. There, in small rooms in Bolton Street off Piccadilly, he wrote the major fiction of his middle years. In 1878 he achieved international renown with his story of an American flirt in Rome, Daisy Miller, and further advanced his reputation with The Europeans that same year. In England he was promptly taken up by the leading Victorians and became a regular at Lord Houghton’s breakfasts, where he consorted with Alfred Tennyson, William Gladstone, Robert Browning, and others. A great social lion, James dined out 140 times during 1878 and 1879 and visited in many of the great Victorian houses and country seats. He was elected to London clubs, published his stories simultaneously in English and American periodicals, and mingled with George Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edmund Gosse, and other writers, thus establishing himself as a significant figure in Anglo-American literary and artistic relations.
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- Leon Edel
Abstract. This chapter examines Henry James's writings in the 1890s and into the new century, with emphasis on his international theme within the contexts of globalism, postmodernism, and cosmopolitanism. It suggests that James was a man of enormous contradictions and self-doubt, which is evident in his fiction such as The Tragic Muse, The ...
1 de mai. de 2014 · PDF | Among the subjects and themes which are found in the works of 19 th American great novelist Henry James, the international theme of America versus... | Find, read and cite all the...
themes and characters has led some of the critics to refer to him as the Shakespeare of the Novel. Sharma in his perceptive analysis has brought out the aspect, namely the international accent in the thematic centres and Scenario in the fiction of Henry James. In the present work which appears to be a revised version of the doctoral disserta
29 de mar. de 2012 · This article demonstrates how changes in Henry James' handling of the international theme, that is Europeans and Americans compared, can be correlated to alterations in the international position of the United States itself. It argues that, whereas in his novels and stories of the 1870s/early 1880s ( Roderick Hudson, Daisy Miller ...
5 de ago. de 2014 · Cite. Summary. Henry James produced a large body of work during dramatic changes in Euro-American imperialism. Much of his work deals centrally with characters, situations and settings in which these changes have immediate relevance.
