Henry James: A Very Short Introduction

An elegant introduction to one of America''s most complex and influential writers.From his childhood in a family of leading American intellectuals through his mature life as a major American man of letters, Henry James (1843-1916) created a unique body of fiction that represents one of the greatest achievements in the nation''s literary history. James''s transnational life in the US and England and his extraordinary siblings (the philosopher William James and diarist Alice James) made his life as complicated as the fictions he produced. In this elegant introduction to the workof Henry James, Susan L. Mizruchi places the notoriously difficult and obscure writings in their historical and biographical context. As James grew in confidence as a writer, his fictions evolved accordingly. These complex accounts of human experience engage with the vital issues of both James''s era and our own. Among the works treated in this introduction are Washington Square, The Europeans, Daisy Miller, The P