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Henry James: A Life
This is the one-volume edition of a famous biography of Henry James, which includes new material. Born in America, Henry James was educated both there and in Europe before settling in London, where he was to spend most of his life, in 1876. His novels represent the culmination of the 19th-century realist tradition of Austen, George Eliot, Flauberty and Balzac, and a decisive step towards the experimental modernism of Woolf and T.S. Eliot. His works often focus upon an innocent American in Europe, and assess the qualities and dangers of both American and European culture at the time, as well as showing their vast differences.
752 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 1985
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934 people want to read
About the author
Leon Edel
145 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 - 23 of 23 reviews
June 27, 2011
This is a great biography.
Henry James dined out like B B King toured - relentlessly, unswervingly, exhaustingly, in one year over 200 times. After stuffing his orifice with broiled warthog, steamed lark and pomegranite marinaded in brandy and garnished with something unspeakable he'd stroll back home and dash off a chapter of The Wings of the Dove and wake up next day and do it all again. Respect.
Probably reading this giant biography is in my top ten of useless time-wasting things I've done. What I should have been doing in the hours it took me to finish it was practically anything else. For instance, dancing the night away with a seemingly endless parade of lovely young women. That would have been better. Why didn't I do that?
Henry James dined out like B B King toured - relentlessly, unswervingly, exhaustingly, in one year over 200 times. After stuffing his orifice with broiled warthog, steamed lark and pomegranite marinaded in brandy and garnished with something unspeakable he'd stroll back home and dash off a chapter of The Wings of the Dove and wake up next day and do it all again. Respect.
Probably reading this giant biography is in my top ten of useless time-wasting things I've done. What I should have been doing in the hours it took me to finish it was practically anything else. For instance, dancing the night away with a seemingly endless parade of lovely young women. That would have been better. Why didn't I do that?
December 1, 2019
I really enjoyed this! The main downside was that sometimes the author bent over backwards to support his biases, and sometimes he gave Henry James a pass for things that he (the author) criticized contemporary women authors for.
November 30, 2007
I don't think this is the text I'm looking for. What I want is the seven volume biography, each about 800 pages, that were part of the required reading for my defense.
I started out grudgingly, and then got totally caught up. It was like an intellectual soap opera. When would James move to England? What was his real relationship with so-and-so? Ahah! What a revealing letter!
If you have a few spare weeks, and you love James (come on, 'fess up) these really are fabulous.
I started out grudgingly, and then got totally caught up. It was like an intellectual soap opera. When would James move to England? What was his real relationship with so-and-so? Ahah! What a revealing letter!
If you have a few spare weeks, and you love James (come on, 'fess up) these really are fabulous.
August 14, 2017
This is, if I'm not mistaken, the condensed single volume edition of Edel's massive five-fat-volumes literary biography. It's just what the doctor ordered.
I nicked one of the volumes (last years, I think) off some dusty shelves awhile back and was surprisingly mesmerized by Edel's meticulous, absorbing near-novelization of a writer with whom, I fear, I may in fact share a great deal except the exposure to and enjoyment of his prose itself. Isn't it strange how that happens?
March 9, 2011
All the James you want without having to read him.
May 10, 2020
One of the great single volume literary biographies of the 20th Century. Edel does a great job of setting forth in great detail the events of James’ life and weaving his major works into it. James was one of the towering literary figures of the late 19th Century and the prototype for the American expatriate abroad. He lived a massive life and produced a mass of literary works and this single volume biography does him and them justice.
July 17, 2012
This is a one volume abridgement of a five volume series on the life of Henry James. Even though it is an abridgement, it is still a lengthy book that takes some effort to get through. There is a lot of discussion of how various events and people in his life influenced his stories and writings. He was a prolific author but it was interesting to see how the stories he wrote are related to the things that were happening to him. He certainly had a cushy life. Never really had to work because of the wealth in his family. Although born in the US, he traveled all over Europe and used his ample leisure time for exploring places so that he could bring it into his writing. Its hard to imagine that he would have produced his writings if he had to worry about where his next meal was going to come from. As a life long bachelor, he didn't have much to worry about. I would have rated it higher but all the details of his travels started to get old. I guess this abridgement could have been abridged itself.
March 14, 2026
Superb abridgment of the massive five volume full edition that I full throatedly endorse. James is a life that absolutely deserves, in fact requires, the five volume treatment because of its scope and length and importance. However, if you can snag a copy of this still lengthy abridgment, you get a still full and lush treatment of the complexity of this man without flinching at some secret crevices that still have yet to be fully explained.
James, like his prose, was complex. I'm not sure he's even less complex than Faulkner, and that is certainly a bold claim. However, by the end of his career, with The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl, one can argue that James takes the old narrative style of "omniscient narrator" as far as it can go without breaking it entirely. I'm convinced that James was a bridge to those modernists and postmodernists without quite being the one to boldly cross into stream of consciousness. He took the third person narrator as far as it could go in that direction, however.
But let's begin in the beginning: James was born into what we would call an upper middle class family in the New York City area. He lived with his family and brothers and sister in the nicer areas of town, including just off 42nd Street and also in Washington Square. His father, an imperious figure, made his money as a doctor and natural philosopher, and dominated his sons' lives (reminds me of Theodore Roosevelt in many ways). Henry was close to his siblings, especially his slightly elder brother William (himself a famous author in his own right on psychology) and his sister Alice and cousin Minny. All would impact his writing of fiction.
From his twenties, James showed a penchant for writing stories about interior struggles that explode into real world consequences. By the time he used his family's financial resources to fund trips to Europe, he immediately began to use the Old World as a resource for his fiction, and often pulled his knowledge of both to set them against one another thematically in his plots. His first truly successful novel, The American, opens with his protagonist American Christopher Newman (get the name?) perusing paintings in the Louvre and encountering old school manners and courtship in Paris. Suffice to say, it confuses him and clashes with his American sensibilities.
James would go on to highlight those clashes throughout this professional life. Even in the domestically set Washington Square, James is concerned with the clash between the older generation, a father-doctor figure, and the interests of a young man who shows interest in his reclusive and unattractive daughter who would inherit his substantial bank account. The denouement is much more thrilling than I set up, but that would be spoiling it. The Europeans is a novel that inserts visitors into America, and Daisy Miller places the heroine at the mercy of suitors in Italy. You get the general idea, except that James finds a way to generate all types of angles to this story that don't repeat themselves. All of them seem based in sound psychological insight, and very few if any are predictable. The Portrait of a Lady is a devastating insight into a woman who is too clever to fall for such marital traps, who finds herself placed in a situation that might not be escapable. James was also proficient in using the faintly supernatural to create psychological insight, such as in his deservedly famous The Turn of the Screw, which outdoes Jane Eyre in its haunting portrayal of a governess who is in for more than she bargained for with the supernatural presence of a former authority figure. By the time we get to those three late novels, James places his psychological style above the plot, to the point that it would be a fair criticism that they are overwritten - the plot of each at 500 pages could be explained in one paragraph - but it is about the interior movements he is highlighting - and obfuscating. In many ways, like The Portrait of a Lady, the protagonists, like in real life, realize the true situation they are in too late to make a difference.
This biography covers this and so much more, including James' personal relationship, his eternal bachelorhood, his writing evolution, his travels, his personal friendships, and his working method. Edel also takes a few tentative stabs at James' sexuality; he was a lifelong bachelor, with several close friendships with men and women. Why was he never married? Why did he never seem to be in a serious relationship? It's possibly that he was deeply closeted in a time when that would be the way to proceed for a famous person who found themselves attracted to men, and yet, we have no evidence that James was attracted to men, even when several of his friends were openly gay. Frankly, I strongly suspect that he was asexual. His characters - and I've read probably 80% of what he wrote, including all of the hundreds of short stories - are never preoccupied with physicality or sexual desire. There is little to nothing in the works that is erotic or charged with physical desire. Love and relationships are mostly transactional, and rarely does the word "love" appear. James himself had a predilection and weakness for gormandizing, and his overeating led to significant weight gain and resorting to a fad diet called Fletcherism, where you chew food into liquids and don't swallow the little solid that remains. So James was certainly obsessed with his physicality negatively, and obsessed with mental states professionally. Ironically, the Master of psychological narration would have been a fascinating case study for a psychiatrist.
If you want the full 700 page (abridged!) version, seek this one out. It's considered the classic account. I found myself "Flectherizing" it myself, and not eating it too quickly to make it last longer. Food for thought surely, as are all of his tales and novels. Challenging in the best possible way.
James, like his prose, was complex. I'm not sure he's even less complex than Faulkner, and that is certainly a bold claim. However, by the end of his career, with The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl, one can argue that James takes the old narrative style of "omniscient narrator" as far as it can go without breaking it entirely. I'm convinced that James was a bridge to those modernists and postmodernists without quite being the one to boldly cross into stream of consciousness. He took the third person narrator as far as it could go in that direction, however.
But let's begin in the beginning: James was born into what we would call an upper middle class family in the New York City area. He lived with his family and brothers and sister in the nicer areas of town, including just off 42nd Street and also in Washington Square. His father, an imperious figure, made his money as a doctor and natural philosopher, and dominated his sons' lives (reminds me of Theodore Roosevelt in many ways). Henry was close to his siblings, especially his slightly elder brother William (himself a famous author in his own right on psychology) and his sister Alice and cousin Minny. All would impact his writing of fiction.
From his twenties, James showed a penchant for writing stories about interior struggles that explode into real world consequences. By the time he used his family's financial resources to fund trips to Europe, he immediately began to use the Old World as a resource for his fiction, and often pulled his knowledge of both to set them against one another thematically in his plots. His first truly successful novel, The American, opens with his protagonist American Christopher Newman (get the name?) perusing paintings in the Louvre and encountering old school manners and courtship in Paris. Suffice to say, it confuses him and clashes with his American sensibilities.
James would go on to highlight those clashes throughout this professional life. Even in the domestically set Washington Square, James is concerned with the clash between the older generation, a father-doctor figure, and the interests of a young man who shows interest in his reclusive and unattractive daughter who would inherit his substantial bank account. The denouement is much more thrilling than I set up, but that would be spoiling it. The Europeans is a novel that inserts visitors into America, and Daisy Miller places the heroine at the mercy of suitors in Italy. You get the general idea, except that James finds a way to generate all types of angles to this story that don't repeat themselves. All of them seem based in sound psychological insight, and very few if any are predictable. The Portrait of a Lady is a devastating insight into a woman who is too clever to fall for such marital traps, who finds herself placed in a situation that might not be escapable. James was also proficient in using the faintly supernatural to create psychological insight, such as in his deservedly famous The Turn of the Screw, which outdoes Jane Eyre in its haunting portrayal of a governess who is in for more than she bargained for with the supernatural presence of a former authority figure. By the time we get to those three late novels, James places his psychological style above the plot, to the point that it would be a fair criticism that they are overwritten - the plot of each at 500 pages could be explained in one paragraph - but it is about the interior movements he is highlighting - and obfuscating. In many ways, like The Portrait of a Lady, the protagonists, like in real life, realize the true situation they are in too late to make a difference.
This biography covers this and so much more, including James' personal relationship, his eternal bachelorhood, his writing evolution, his travels, his personal friendships, and his working method. Edel also takes a few tentative stabs at James' sexuality; he was a lifelong bachelor, with several close friendships with men and women. Why was he never married? Why did he never seem to be in a serious relationship? It's possibly that he was deeply closeted in a time when that would be the way to proceed for a famous person who found themselves attracted to men, and yet, we have no evidence that James was attracted to men, even when several of his friends were openly gay. Frankly, I strongly suspect that he was asexual. His characters - and I've read probably 80% of what he wrote, including all of the hundreds of short stories - are never preoccupied with physicality or sexual desire. There is little to nothing in the works that is erotic or charged with physical desire. Love and relationships are mostly transactional, and rarely does the word "love" appear. James himself had a predilection and weakness for gormandizing, and his overeating led to significant weight gain and resorting to a fad diet called Fletcherism, where you chew food into liquids and don't swallow the little solid that remains. So James was certainly obsessed with his physicality negatively, and obsessed with mental states professionally. Ironically, the Master of psychological narration would have been a fascinating case study for a psychiatrist.
If you want the full 700 page (abridged!) version, seek this one out. It's considered the classic account. I found myself "Flectherizing" it myself, and not eating it too quickly to make it last longer. Food for thought surely, as are all of his tales and novels. Challenging in the best possible way.
October 10, 2017
One of the best biographies I have read (comparable to Deutscher's The Prophet).
December 5, 2020
A very detailed five volume account of the life and career of Henry James. Edel's devotion to his subject is almost at the same level as Robert Caro's devotion to Lyndon Johnson.
One thing to watch out for: these characters are all ghosts; over and over again we learn that "he is away..." or "she was visiting Europe..." and "They had only just arrived only to depart again abruptly..." No one is grounded, and the search for solid ground ends with the coffin lid closing and dirt tossed over the final resting place.
Actually ghosts are more interesting; there is a purpose to their ramble. To read Edel is to be caught up in the recognition that the more we try to find meaning and purpose in life, the more meaning and purpose evaporate before our eyes.
One thing to watch out for: these characters are all ghosts; over and over again we learn that "he is away..." or "she was visiting Europe..." and "They had only just arrived only to depart again abruptly..." No one is grounded, and the search for solid ground ends with the coffin lid closing and dirt tossed over the final resting place.
Actually ghosts are more interesting; there is a purpose to their ramble. To read Edel is to be caught up in the recognition that the more we try to find meaning and purpose in life, the more meaning and purpose evaporate before our eyes.
March 12, 2017
Essential, basic, the real thing for those who admire the writing of Henry James.
September 17, 2022
I like it. It was engaging and informative.
April 6, 2016
An indispensable biography for anyone who loves Henry James as much as I do. While Edel is clearly a fan too--how could you not be and write such a massive biography of the man? (this volume is the abridged version of Edel's original 5-volume biography)--he doesn't shy away from James's very human flaws and limitations. Rather, he shows us how it was those same flaws and limitations that fed James's art and gave it, at its best, the essential humanity that lies at its heart.
January 7, 2008
This was kind of a mistake read.
The book reads like a list of cocktail parties and social meetings James had from cradle to grave, but fails to include his thinking on the major issues of his day! Sorry to say a wast of time tomb. Its on the shelf now collecting dust
The book reads like a list of cocktail parties and social meetings James had from cradle to grave, but fails to include his thinking on the major issues of his day! Sorry to say a wast of time tomb. Its on the shelf now collecting dust
Currently reading
May 20, 2008Ho-ho! What's that? Don't think I have the stones to get through the full five volumes before the summer's out? We'll just see about that. Perhaps you're forgetting how much I love this man. AND his (biggest) biographer.
January 31, 2009
Henry James dined and/or lunched with nearly everyone in Europe during his lifetime, yet remained lonely and irascible.
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February 11, 2011try to read
Currently reading
July 6, 2012when he returned to america after europe, he said he had no society. for now, he is my society. i love his androgyny.
February 12, 2015
Nearly as long and tedious as James' later novels....
July 30, 2015
Read this book in Bordeaux while preparing for my thesis
October 4, 2015
Just saw the Guardian listed this as one of the ten best literary biographies. I agree but now am inclined to read and enjoy it again.
November 20, 2016
It is really great. Took me almost a year to read it. I mean the abridged version.
to-buy
April 19, 2018Mentioned in Shadow in the Garden a biographer’s tale by James Atlas
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews