The Diary of Alice James

by Leon Edel

Unlike her ubiquitous brothers, psychologist and philosopher William and novelist Henry, Jr., Alice James (1848-1892)-the youngest child and only daughter of the wealthy, mercurial, and eccentric New Englander Henry James, Sr.-passed much of her brief lifetime at home, largely isolated from society, unafforded the opportunity to receive extensive formal education or to attain the public success or recognition of her famous siblings. She was, in many ways, a victim of a society that severely circumscribed the lives of women, and that deprived even privileged and talented women like Alice of their intellectual, spiritual, and emotional-as well as physical-freedom. Indeed, James spent many of her years as an invalid, afflicted with a depressive malaise that left her constantly trying to recover a sense of identity and integrity.Yet, within the pages of the journal she kept during the last four years of her life, Alice James emerges neither as a downtrodden casualty of her era nor as merely an interesting footnote to the illustrious James family saga, but rather as a formidable and triumphant individual in her own right. Far from displaying any wholesale acceptance of the ruling assumptions about her gender-or, for that matter, about anything else-James's diary reveals a vigorously opinionated, intellectually curious, extremely gifted writer renegotiating her position within the discourses of her time.Long unavailable to students, scholars, and the general reader, this volume reprints Leon Edel's 1964 edition, which is widely accepted as the most faithful reproduction of the original diary. A new introduction by Linda Simon draws extensively on recent scholarship to illuminate James's role both in the context of her family and nineteenth-century culture.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Diary, History, Autobiography, 19th Century

Mass Market Paperback

First published April 29, 1982

About the author

Joseph 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.

Reviews

[lorinbocol · Rating 4 out of 5]

henry james ti voglio bene e non voglio toglierti nulla. ma tu eri un genio, grazie tante. william era filosofo e psicologo di chiara fama, e siamo a due. lei era la sorellina: ultima arrivata, unica femmina, ergo nessun luminoso futuro in vista.
alice nella famiglia delle meraviglie avrebbe potuto specializzarsi in angelo del focolare, e chiuderla lì. invece senza alcuna affettazione, e parlando della propria vita, nei tre anni coperti da questo diario ha raccontato anche la condizione di tutte le donne brillanti su cui era normale non nutrire aspettative. e siccome ci vuole stoffa soprattutto nel fallimento, queste memorie sono uscite postume (alice morì a 43 anni di tumore al seno) e sono diventate meritatamente un classico.
«so che c’è in me (...) un folletto non solo enormemente divertito dalle minuscole illuminanti complicazioni che cadono entro il suo limitato raggio d’azione, ma che è pronto a immergersi nelle follie del genere umano, che trova tanto più stimolanti delle virtù! come sono felice di non aver mai lottato per diventare una di quelle persone «che non sono come gli altri», ma di avere scoperto fin dal primo momento che il mio talento consisteva nell’essere proprio come tutti».

[Buck · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm going through a spell of reader's block right now, flitting promiscuously from book to book, never settling down for very long, so maybe poor old Alice is just a victim of my impatience. I really DID want to like her, though, if only so I could get all contrarian and tell people that Alice was the true genius in the James family, William and Henry being mere intellectual usurpers (as some of the cruder feminist fantasies would have it.)

She was definitely a clever lady, and inherited the Jamesian flair for syntax, but her diary savours too much of the sick room: all her microscopic powers of observation, all her style and wit, were of necessity concentrated on the tiny patch of humanity visible from her bed. So there's a lot of stuff about her nurse and second-hand gossip about the maid's extended family. Oh, and when she gets tired of the two or three real people hovering vaguely about her life, she drags in long extracts from the newspaper to exercise her cloistered intelligence upon.

If I wanted to read a day-by-day account of a morbid, stunted, tragically wasted existence, I could dig out my own diary, ha ha (nervous titter there). Anyway, unless you're either a hardcore feminist or a hardcore Jamesian, there's no reason at all for you to read this book.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alice's James writing is wonderful, ironic and sarcastic, an important historical document of illness too, especially the folly of doctors in their diagnosis of 'hysteria', 'neurasthenia' and the other synonyms. I could only give the whole book 3 stars because Leon Edel, like many, including Ruth Yeazell and Jean Strouse, and even Susan Sontag, are so seduced by historical (and modern day) psychogenic explanations (despite their ever more obvious flaws), that this colours their whole appraisal of James's life and work. They appear only able to think of her within a sexist discursive formation that treats her disability as a character flaw in the final analysis, and end up missing her brilliance and wit in their analysis. So I would take Edel's pronouncements (and indeed Strouse and Yeazell's work, and Sontag's play) with a large pinch of salt.

[Gary Norris · Rating 5 out of 5]

i have always had a huge crush for alice...

[Sam Schulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Middle-aged Swedenborgian-bred Nineteenth Century Feminist Heroines Telling Jokes.

After all these decades of evading the reading of my old friend Jeannie Strouse's biography of Alice James, I realized that I took my evasion so far that I never knew there was such a thing as AJ's published diary. I'm sorry I didn't know it earlier. It is one of the funnier books I've read, and not just amusing because of AJ's often self-puncturing sense of humor. What I would never have suspected is that, second only to Dan Okrent, poor Alice was a consummate connoisseur of formal "jokes" and stories. They remained in my memory for some time - a lot longer than Dan's ever have done. She recorded the stories lovingly, and her taste in them had nothing highbrow about them. Nor was her exquisite sensibility a barrier to understanding the humor and individuality of the servants and hired hands whom she needed to take care of her. There are also some wonderful non-PC or anti-PC remarks which I will not share with you - I need them for my future writing ("As Alice James said, 'TK'".)
She is not only a laff riot, though - the book is full of evidence of her brother Henry's careful attention to her, and of her appreciation of his genius. Her awakening as more than an ordinary girl, she remembers, came when she was 6 or 7, HJ 9 or 10, and this I do remember. They were visiting a friend of the family, who lived in a dull and dusty house in a dull and dusty town, and Henry and Alice were sitting dully on a child's swing, when he looked at her and said something like, "well, this is a kind of fun, one could say." She found it so funny at the time, and Henry's remark revealed such a possibility of sensibility all at once, irony, deprecation, truth-telling and truth management, that she regarded it as the beginning of her spiritual life, as well as of her understanding that her brother was extraordinary.
Maybe I'll dare to read Jeannie's book now...
HJ: the American is adaptable to new circumstances because "he hasen't to cease being someone else first"
Indignant as a writer asserting that the Civil War showed that members of one nation and one race could still slaughter one another; "is the freeing of millions of human beings from bondage a cause unworthy to life up the souls of wives to send forth their husbands and mothers their sons to battle?" (said the sister of two brothers wounded in the war.)
Remarks on the willingess of Englishwomen to marry again a couple of years after widowhood, "what so rarely happens at home." Quantity over quality, she wonders?

[Sara-Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

good to read in the bathtub or while eating pie.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intellectual with insightful and humorous opinions, Alice James' commentary captured her times brilliantly. Just as important were her poignant reflections on her on struggles with mental health and eventual terminal physical disease. The editor provided copious notes for every name that came up in the diary--wish he'd added notes translating French passages to English.

[Dana Loo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un diario sorprendente scritto da una donna sorprendente se consideriamo il fatto che fu pensato ed elaborato, all'insaputa della sua famiglia, praticamente nel suo letto di morte. Alice James ultima e unica femmina dei cinque fratelli James, di cui i più famosi furono Henry, il noto scrittore, e William, altrettanto noto psicologo e filosofo, nasce dunque in una famiglia poco ortodossa di intellettuali legati, gli uni agli altri, da un grande e sincero affetto. Afflitta sin dall'adolescenza da quel mal di vivere che era comune alle donne di fine 800 che si sentivano intrappolate in un'esistenza non adeguata alle loro potenziali capacità, preferì rinunciarvi del tutto e fare degli ultimi suoi anni di vita l'esperienza più esaltante della sua intera esistenza.
Donna intelligente, ironica, ma soprattutto autoironica, sagace, pungente, brillante e dotata di notevole humor e capacità critiche, invece di lasciarsi deprimere dalla sua condizione debilitante, preferisce farsi coinvolgere ed assorbire da molteplici interessi e situazioni che riguardano personaggi e argomenti tra i più disparati coadiuvata, in questa sua singolare avventura diaristica, dalla fedele e inseparabile amica Katharine P. Loring che ne scrisse anche, sotto dettatura, le ultime pagine prima che la morte la cogliesse, a soli 43 anni, per un sopravvenuto tumore al seno. Consapevole del suo destino fino all'ultimo respiro e all'ultima pagina del suo diario, non si piegò mai alla morte, anzi ne parlò quasi con irriverenza, ultimo e unico atto rivoluzionario di una donna avanti nel tempo...

[J. D. Román · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alice James, la hermana del famoso escritor Henry James, narra sus últimos meses de vida con una tranquilidad abrumadora, como si en el fondo Alice esperaba con gusto a la muerte.

Adoro su honestidad para ridiculizar escritores que ella conoció, como William Dean Howells. Incluso critica a autores que ella ha leído. Si quieren una descripción filosa pero sincera de George Eliot, la encontrarán en este diario.

Sin embargo, hay veces en que Alice se desvía a copiar relatos de algún periódico, lo cual me cansaba en la lectura.

Pese a ello, he quedado con una buena impresión de Alice James, una mujer que en su agonía encontró en la literatura y en sus seres amados aquel refugio para analizar su sociedad, reírse de las ridiculeces de la vida y disfrutar de cada segundo de vida que Dios le otorgó.

[Kathy Hale · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of diary entries of Alice James, sister of Henry James, the novelist in the few years proceeding her early death. perhaps if you like English history of the mid to late 1800's of Britain you may like this book. I found it a bit petty and a spoiled young woman who liked to gossip.

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more, but I have to admit a lot of it was boring.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rather liked this sad paperback with its tattered edges. This diary covers a fragment of the author's life, I will try to track down a biography because there are more questions than answers here.

There is a lot of material that is lost on me—the day to day news filled with names and places that I know nothing about. Although the Irish deal and her musings on the local poor were absorbing enough. Checking Wikipedia to refresh my knowledge, I recognize the name of Michel Collins. There are pictures of him at the bar called Doyle’s, in the Boston neighborhood of JP, which for a short spell was one of the main go to places for large family gatherings. I remember someone calling him the Irish Gary Hart, back when people knew who Gary Hart was.

(I have not been there in years, it was great for big groups, large and friendly with a long wooden bar, tons of tables, and a cool enclosed phone booth that was a great way to kill time with the young ones.)

Ms. James is sister to the brilliant William and Henry James, who I probably should read up on, but won’t because I believe the would be boring and too erudite for my shrinking brain.

Ms. James lives the life of a Victorian female stereotype; chronic illness and permanent invalidism. She takes a trip to England and then is never strong enough to come back (I wonder), so hangs out there and eventually dies of breast cancer. Which could not have been the source of her decades of afflictions, but what difference does it make. The preface describes a devoted female friend, so of course, we must decide who this frail lady desires, whether consummated or not.

I would re-read this in another edition if there were some decent footnotes.

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

i learned from this book that alice james, the sister of william james, a man i adore, and henry james, an author i sometimes enjoy, is vapid and b-o-r-i-n-g.