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The Life of Henry James #5
Henry James: The Master: 1901-1916
"One of the finest literary biographies in the language--perhaps any language." Clifton Fadiman
With THE MASTER, Leon Edel brings to triumphant conclusion his award winning five volume life of Henry James. This volume can be read independently as an authoritative summing up of Henry James the man and the artist. He is seen in his final Johnsonian character, at large in London, the devastating with and critic, mingling with the older generation--Twain, Conrad, Crane--crossing swords with Bernard Shaw, looming over the nascent Bloomsbury group, especially Virginia Woolf, and even confronting the young Winston Churchill. Mr. Edel paints a definitive picture of James's relationship with novelist Edith Wharton and his devoted frienship with his acolytes, Hendrik Andersen, Jocelyn Persse, and Hugh Walpole.
With THE MASTER, Leon Edel brings to triumphant conclusion his award winning five volume life of Henry James. This volume can be read independently as an authoritative summing up of Henry James the man and the artist. He is seen in his final Johnsonian character, at large in London, the devastating with and critic, mingling with the older generation--Twain, Conrad, Crane--crossing swords with Bernard Shaw, looming over the nascent Bloomsbury group, especially Virginia Woolf, and even confronting the young Winston Churchill. Mr. Edel paints a definitive picture of James's relationship with novelist Edith Wharton and his devoted frienship with his acolytes, Hendrik Andersen, Jocelyn Persse, and Hugh Walpole.
591 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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About the author
Leon Edel
142 books7 followersJoseph Leon Edel was a American/Canadian literary critic and biographer. Edel taught English and American literature at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) from 1932 until 1934, New York University from 1953 until 1972, and at University of Hawaii at Manoa from 1972 until 1978. From 1944 to 1952, he worked as a reporter and feature writer for the left-wing New York newspapers PM and the Daily Compass.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 19, 2009
Last night I finished reading the fifth, and final, volume of Leon Edel's biography of Henry James. I started reading Volume One in December, and now it is March. The reading was fitful, most of it done during school breaks and long weekends. Coming to the end of the massive Life, I read "New York 1950-Honolulu 1971." I take the dates to mark the start and the end of the writing of this biography, though the dreaming and conception of such a work presumably began even earlier. So, at least, 21 years to research and write this Life.
Highly unlikely that those 21 years saw an uniform level of work, an equal intensity of focus. I imagine there were highs and lows, times when the stitch was dropped, times when the cloth bunched up, and times when the purr of the sewing machine was the only sound heard. But the Life showed no sign of those varying times. It flows, seamlessly, a narrative of great grace and penetrating insight. Its triumph is the imposition of form on chronological chaos, the making of a Life out of a life.
The writing of three mature novels and two works of autobiography, the deaths of family and friends, the worry over one's literary legacy, the body's decay, the ambiguous relations with younger writers, the Great War: these were less events than happenings when they happened in James's life, but in Edel's hands, they become events, they acquire proportion, weight and texture, they join up into a beautiful tapestry. Life is not art, but Edel has done what James says art must do: "Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance." Edel shows why James's life is interesting and important.
Highly unlikely that those 21 years saw an uniform level of work, an equal intensity of focus. I imagine there were highs and lows, times when the stitch was dropped, times when the cloth bunched up, and times when the purr of the sewing machine was the only sound heard. But the Life showed no sign of those varying times. It flows, seamlessly, a narrative of great grace and penetrating insight. Its triumph is the imposition of form on chronological chaos, the making of a Life out of a life.
The writing of three mature novels and two works of autobiography, the deaths of family and friends, the worry over one's literary legacy, the body's decay, the ambiguous relations with younger writers, the Great War: these were less events than happenings when they happened in James's life, but in Edel's hands, they become events, they acquire proportion, weight and texture, they join up into a beautiful tapestry. Life is not art, but Edel has done what James says art must do: "Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance." Edel shows why James's life is interesting and important.
October 28, 2013
I did it. I read all five volumes of Henry James' biography! It really hurt when close to the end, I submitted to the temptation of Google and was dismayed to find that the 1972 New York Review of Books attributed the length of Leon Edel's biography to " glut of detail, of which much is only of minor interest." I beg your pardon, Philip Rahv, I loved every G-train escaping minute of it. 2,091 pages. Somebody agrees with me: it's a goddamn Pulitzer Prize winner after all. I miss ole HJ already. What will I do with my commute?
July 19, 2018
Edel is considered the ultimate Henry James expert, and he definitely gives off the sense of being immersed in James' life and work. I suppose it is his knowledge of James that gives him the confidence to make some of the assumptions he does about what James thinks and feels at a given moment.
In general I liked Edel's approach to the biography - in the introduction to this volume he writes about his non-traditional structure and rather imaginative approach, which he sees as dictated by the material and the subject. I can't say I disagree with him on that. However, what I liked far less was his over-emphasis on psychoanalysis in his readings of James' work. I know that it's a marker of Edel's literary and cultural moment, but I find it reductive - too convenient and neat. Sometimes it seems that Edel is trying to hard to identify a specific personal narrative arc in James' career. I should say that I found Edel's depiction of the last few months of James' life, and his death, to be the most moving I have read. I cried when the cher maitre died. But that might just be because I have a problem with unhealthy author-scholar relationships.
In general I liked Edel's approach to the biography - in the introduction to this volume he writes about his non-traditional structure and rather imaginative approach, which he sees as dictated by the material and the subject. I can't say I disagree with him on that. However, what I liked far less was his over-emphasis on psychoanalysis in his readings of James' work. I know that it's a marker of Edel's literary and cultural moment, but I find it reductive - too convenient and neat. Sometimes it seems that Edel is trying to hard to identify a specific personal narrative arc in James' career. I should say that I found Edel's depiction of the last few months of James' life, and his death, to be the most moving I have read. I cried when the cher maitre died. But that might just be because I have a problem with unhealthy author-scholar relationships.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews