The Death and Letters of Alice James

by Alice James, Ruth Bernard Yeazell (Editor)

The death and letters of Alice James

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Alice^James

Alice James was a American diarist. The only daughter of Henry James, Sr., and sister of psychologist and philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, she is known mainly for the posthumously published diary that she kept in her final years, which has made James something of a feminist icon: she was seen as struggling through her mental and physical illnesses to find her own voice.

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

DISCLAIMER - I write this as a researcher on Alice James and her experience of disability and psychogenic dismissal of it during her lifetime, and since. Alice James' letters themselves are fascinating. That she "stood up" to her frankly condescending brothers William and Henry, with sarcasm and irony, is frankly a wonderful revelation. But this revelation is NOT made by Ruth Yeazell herself. Ruth Yeazell instead merely rehearses the tired, hackneyed cliched opinion about Alice's impairments and disability being "psychosomatic" that has unfortunately dogged most "scholarship" about her life. Indeed, this view appears to colour Yeazell's view of James' writing, so that she fails to see the witty, playful, ironic, gloriously sarcastic, brave Alice at all. Sadly, it has meant that as a historical resource, it falls down, as Yeazell's editorial choices reveal themselves as possibly unreliable to the researcher. It IS a necessary resource to consult, but there is much to critique about the editorship. The notion Alice wanted to die, as is implied by Yeazell, is particularly cruel, because it should be clear that Alice was writing with bitter irony about finally getting a reliable diagnosis with her breat cancer, something many disabled and chronically people would recognise reading her words. Yeazell's lack of insight into that irony is depressing, leading to the unreliable, simplistic, prejudicial notion that James was thrilled to be properly ill at last.

[Lisa Grunwald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating portrait in letters of an enigmatic woman whose writing was witty and precise, and whose emotional and physical challenges will be eerily resonant today for anyone with an undiagnosed illness.

[Kate]

From 5books.com

[Aileen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found a copy of this in a bookstore to which I had been given a gift certificate. I was hoping to find some required reading for classes, and I didn't, so I had to procure something else useful from its shelves. I had a spark of interest about Alice James but didn't know much about her. And the title is shocking enough to want to pick up. The essay that starts off the book is very helpful in fleshing out what you will be reading in the many letters that follow, and the letters themselves show a woman intent on her own intellectual pursuit; she welcomes her death and is glad of the opportunity to make a study of dying. It's a very surprising book.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it would be more depressing.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

makes her brothers look like pretentious busy-bodies - out-stoics Marcus Aurelius in some of these letters