127-572: The New York Edition of Henry James' fiction was a 24-volume collection of the Anglo-American writer's novels , novellas and short stories , originally published in the U.S. and the UK between 1907 and 1909, with a photogravure frontispiece for each volume by Alvin Langdon Coburn . Two more volumes containing James' unfinished novels, The Ivory Tower and The Sense of
254-412: A " stream of consciousness ", had a direct and significant impact on avant-garde and modernist literature and art, notably in the case of James Joyce . In "What Pragmatism Means" (1906), James writes that the central point of his own doctrine of truth is, in brief: Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word
381-602: A cousin of the James family came down to the house in Fourteenth Street and, one evening during his stay, read the first instalment of David Copperfield aloud to the elders of the family: Henry Junior had sneaked down from his bedroom to listen surreptitiously to the reading, until a scene involving the Murdstones led him to "loud[ly] sob," whereupon he was discovered and sent back to bed. Between 1855 and 1860,
508-616: A dramatisation of his popular novella Daisy Miller in 1882. From 1890 to 1892, having received a bequest that freed him from magazine publication, he made a strenuous effort to succeed on the London stage, writing a half-dozen plays, of which only one, a dramatisation of his novel The American , was produced. This play was performed for several years by a touring repertory company, and had a respectable run in London, but did not earn very much money for James. His other plays written at this time were not produced. In 1893, however, he responded to
635-674: A freelance writer in Rome and then secured a position as Paris correspondent for the New York Tribune through the influence of its editor, John Hay . When these efforts failed, he returned to New York City. During 1874 and 1875, he published Transatlantic Sketches , A Passionate Pilgrim and Roderick Hudson . In 1875, James wrote for The Nation every week; he received anywhere from $ 3 to $ 10 for brief paragraphs, $ 12 to $ 25 for book reviews and $ 25 to $ 40 for travel articles and lengthier items. During this early period in his career, he
762-461: A house, 58 West Fourteenth Street , in Manhattan. A painting of a view of Florence by Thomas Cole hung in the front parlor of this house on West Fourteenth. His education was calculated by his father to expose him to many influences, primarily scientific and philosophical; it was described by Percy Lubbock, the editor of his selected letters, as "extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous." Once,
889-936: A lively group informally known as The Metaphysical Club in 1872. Louis Menand (2001) suggested that this Club provided a foundation for American intellectual thought for decades to come. James joined the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898, in opposition to the United States annexation of the Philippines. Among James's students at Harvard University were Boris Sidis , Theodore Roosevelt , George Santayana , W. E. B. Du Bois , G. Stanley Hall , Ralph Barton Perry , Gertrude Stein , Horace Kallen , Morris Raphael Cohen , Walter Lippmann , Alain Locke , C. I. Lewis , and Mary Whiton Calkins . Antiquarian bookseller Gabriel Wells tutored under him at Harvard in
1016-482: A living, however, and lacked the experiences of select schools, university, and army service, the common bonds of masculine society. He was furthermore a man whose tastes and interests were, according to the prevailing standards of Victorian era Anglo-American culture, rather feminine, and who was shadowed by the cloud of prejudice that then and later accompanied suspicions of his homosexuality. Edmund Wilson compared James's objectivity to Shakespeare's: One would be in
1143-806: A long visit, James refers jocularly to their "happy little congress of two". In letters to Hugh Walpole, he pursues convoluted jokes and puns about their relationship, referring to himself as an elephant who "paws you oh so benevolently" and winds about Walpole his "well-meaning old trunk". His letters to Walter Berry printed by the Black Sun Press have long been celebrated for their lightly veiled eroticism. However, James corresponded in equally extravagant language with his many female friends, writing, for example, to fellow novelist Lucy Clifford : "Dearest Lucy! What shall I say? when I love you so very, very much, and see you nine times for once that I see Others! Therefore I think that—if you want it made clear to
1270-568: A number of weeks in Italy in 1887, and his shock and grief over her suicide in 1894, are discussed in detail in Edel's biography and play a central role in a study by Lyndall Gordon . Edel conjectured that Woolson was in love with James and killed herself in part because of his coldness, but Woolson's biographers have objected to Edel's account. James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from
1397-430: A once-familiar paradigm in biographies of homosexuals when direct evidence was nonexistent. Novick also criticised Edel for following the discounted Freudian interpretation of homosexuality "as a kind of failure." The difference of opinion erupted in a series of exchanges between Edel (and later Fred Kaplan filling in for Edel) and Novick, which were published by the online magazine Slate , with Novick arguing that even
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#17327796744741524-683: A physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave". He interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson , his godson William James Sidis , as well as Charles Sanders Peirce , Bertrand Russell , Josiah Royce , Ernst Mach , John Dewey , Macedonio Fernández , Walter Lippmann , Mark Twain , Horatio Alger , G. Stanley Hall , Henri Bergson , Carl Jung , Jane Addams and Sigmund Freud . James spent almost all of his academic career at Harvard. He
1651-489: A position to appreciate James better if one compared him with the dramatists of the seventeenth century— Racine and Molière , whom he resembles in form as well as in point of view, and even Shakespeare , when allowances are made for the most extreme differences in subject and form. These poets are not, like Dickens and Hardy , writers of melodrama—either humorous or pessimistic, nor secretaries of society like Balzac , nor prophets like Tolstoy : they are occupied simply with
1778-409: A repeated exposure of this wickedness, a reiterated and passionate plea for the fullest freedom of development, unimperiled by reckless and barbarous stupidity. Philip Guedalla jokingly described three phases in the development of James's prose: "James I, James II, and The Old Pretender," and observers do often group his works of fiction into three periods. In his apprentice years, culminating with
1905-573: A request from actor-manager George Alexander for a serious play for the opening of his renovated St. James's Theatre, and wrote a long drama, Guy Domville , which Alexander produced. A noisy uproar arose on the opening night, 5 January 1895, with hissing from the gallery when James took his bow after the final curtain, and the author was upset. The play received moderately good reviews and had a modest run of four weeks before being taken off to make way for Oscar Wilde 's The Importance of Being Earnest , which Alexander thought would have better prospects for
2032-431: A series of prefaces for the set which have become the focus of intense critical attention. Written in the ornate style of his final years, the prefaces discuss such important topics in the writing of fiction as point of view , the central intelligence of the protagonist , "foreshortening" or the presentation of complex material in a reasonable length, creating the sense of wonder necessary for effective storytelling ,
2159-663: A series of adverbs. The overall effect could be a vivid evocation of a scene as perceived by a sensitive observer. It has been debated whether this change of style was engendered by James's shifting from writing to dictating to a typist, a change made during the composition of What Maisie Knew . In its intense focus on the consciousness of his major characters, James's later work foreshadows extensive developments in 20th-century fiction. Indeed, he might have influenced stream-of-consciousness writers such as Virginia Woolf , who not only read some of his novels but also wrote essays about them. Both contemporary and modern readers have found
2286-405: A serious disease, and her impact on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable motives, while others are more self-interested. James stated in his autobiographical books that Milly was based on Minny Temple, his beloved cousin, who died at an early age of tuberculosis. He said that he attempted in the novel to wrap her memory in the "beauty and dignity of art". James
2413-457: A ship and sneaked them through customs, allowing her to bury him in their family plot. James regularly rejected suggestions that he should marry, and after settling in London, proclaimed himself "a bachelor". F. W. Dupee , in several volumes on the James family, originated the theory that he had been in love with his cousin, Mary ("Minnie") Temple, but that a neurotic fear of sex kept him from admitting such affections: "James's invalidism ...
2540-909: A significant worker in the Erie Canal project and helping Albany become a major center of trade, he then became the first vice-president of the Albany Savings Bank. William James (grandfather) went from being a poor Irish immigrant to one of the richest men in New York. After his death, his son Henry James inherited his fortune and lived in Europe and the United States searching for the meaning of life. Of James' five children, two—Margaret and Alexander—are known to have had children. Descendants of Alexander are still living. William James wrote voluminously throughout his life. A non-exhaustive bibliography of his writings, compiled by John McDermott ,
2667-503: A stutter, which seems to have manifested itself only when he spoke English; in French, he did not stutter. In the summer of 1857, the James family went to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where they set up house at No. 20 Rue Neuve Chaussée, and where Henry was a regular customer at an English lending library. In the autumn of that year, Henry Senior wrote from Boulogne to a friend that "Henry is not so fond of study, properly so-called, as of reading...He
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#17327796744742794-474: A variety of psychological symptoms which were diagnosed at the time as neurasthenia , and which included periods of depression during which he contemplated suicide for months on end. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson ( Wilkie ) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the American Civil War . James himself was an advocate of peace. He suggested that instead of youth serving in the military that they serve
2921-419: A view if its conception of truth is analyzed and justified through interpretation, pragmatically. As a matter of fact, James's whole philosophy is of productive beliefs. Belief in anything involves conceiving of how it is real, but disbelief is the result when we dismiss something because it contradicts another thing we think of as real. In his "Sentiment of Rationality", saying that crucial beliefs are not known
3048-601: Is 47 pages long. He gained widespread recognition with his monumental The Principles of Psychology (1890), totaling twelve hundred pages in two volumes, which took twelve years to complete. Psychology: The Briefer Course , was an 1892 abridgement designed as a less rigorous introduction to the field. These works criticized both the English associationist school and the Hegelianism of his day as competing dogmatisms of little explanatory value, and sought to re-conceive
3175-560: Is a devourer of libraries, and an immense writer of novels and dramas. He has considerable talent as a writer, but I am at a loss to know whether he will ever accomplish much." William recorded in a letter to their parents in Paris, while the boys were staying in Bonn, that Henry and Garth Wilkinson would wrestle "when study has made them dull and sleepy." In 1860, the family returned to Newport. There, Henry befriended Thomas Sergeant Perry , who
3302-484: Is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology . A Review of General Psychology analysis, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. A survey published in American Psychologist in 1991 ranked James's reputation in second place, after Wilhelm Wundt , who is widely regarded as the founder of experimental psychology. James also developed
3429-459: Is exercised well or badly. His protagonists were often young American women facing oppression or abuse, and as his secretary Theodora Bosanquet remarked in her monograph Henry James at Work : When he walked out of the refuge of his study and into the world and looked around him, he saw a place of torment, where creatures of prey perpetually thrust their claws into the quivering flesh of doomed, defenseless children of light ... His novels are
3556-400: Is generally straightforward and, though personally characteristic, well within the norms of 19th-century fiction. Roderick Hudson (1875) is a Künstlerroman that traces the development of the title character, an extremely talented sculptor. Although the book shows some signs of immaturity—this was James's first serious attempt at a full-length novel—it has attracted favourable comment due to
3683-658: Is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The "facts" themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them. Richard Rorty made the contested claim that James did not mean to give a theory of truth with this statement and that we should not regard it as such. However, other pragmatism scholars such as Susan Haack and Howard Mounce do not share Rorty's instrumentalist interpretation of James. In The Meaning of Truth (1909), James seems to speak of truth in relativistic terms, in reference to critics of pragmatism: "The critic's trouble … seems to come from his taking
3810-458: Is set mainly in Europe, especially in England and Italy. Generally regarded as the masterpiece of his early phase, The Portrait of a Lady is described as a psychological novel , exploring the minds of his characters, and almost a work of social science, exploring the differences between Europeans and Americans, the old and the new worlds. The second period of James's career, which extends from
3937-580: Is the subject of contention among James's biographers, but the letters to Andersen were occasionally quasierotic: "I put, my dear boy, my arm around you, & feel the pulsation, thereby, as it were, of our excellent future & your admirable endowment." His numerous letters to the many young homosexual men among his close male friends are more forthcoming. To his homosexual friend Howard Sturgis , James could write: "I repeat, almost to indiscretion, that I could live with you. Meanwhile, I can only try to live without you." In another letter Sturgis, following
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4064-443: Is to have lived & loved & cursed & floundered & enjoyed & suffered—I don't think I regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth". The interpretation of James as living a less austere emotional life has been subsequently explored by other scholars. The often intense politics of Jamesian scholarship has also been the subject of studies. Author Colm Tóibín has said that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick 's Epistemology of
4191-400: Is verifiable through its correspondence to reality, and its observable effects of putting the idea to practice. For example, James extends his Pragmatism to the hypothesis of God: "On pragmatic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. … The problem is to build it out and determine it so that it will combine satisfactorily with all
4318-794: The North American Review . James finally earned his MD degree in June 1869 but he never practiced medicine. What he called his "soul-sickness" would only be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching. He married Alice Gibbens in 1878. In 1882 he joined the Theosophical Society . James's time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, helping him find that his true interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology. Later, in 1902 he would write: "I originally studied medicine in order to be
4445-987: The Psychological Review . He challenged his professional colleagues not to let a narrow mindset prevent an honest appraisal of those beliefs. In an empirical study by Haggbloom et al. using six criteria such as citations and recognition, James was found to be the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. William James was the son of Henry James (Senior) of Albany, and Mary Robertson Walsh. He had four siblings: Henry (the novelist), Garth Wilkinson, Robertson, and Alice . William became engaged to Alice Howe Gibbens on May 10, 1878; they were married on July 10. They had 5 children: Henry (May 18, 1879 – 1947), William (June 17, 1882 – 1961), Herman (1884, died in infancy), Margaret (March 1887 – 1950) and Alexander (December 22, 1890 – 1946). Most of William James's ancestors arrived in America from Scotland or Ireland in
4572-660: The 54th Massachusetts . In 1864, the James family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to be near William, who had enrolled first in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard and then in the medical school. In 1862, Henry attended Harvard Law School , but realised that he was not interested in studying law. He pursued his interest in literature and associated with authors and critics William Dean Howells and Charles Eliot Norton in Boston and Cambridge and formed lifelong friendships with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. ,
4699-528: The Amazon River , but aborted his trip after eight months, as he suffered bouts of severe seasickness and mild smallpox . His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867. He traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868; at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he began to publish; reviews of his works appeared in literary periodicals such as
4826-526: The Atlantic Monthly . The novel was later published in book form in 1878. During a 14-month trip through Europe in 1869–70, he met John Ruskin , Charles Dickens , Matthew Arnold , William Morris , and George Eliot . Rome impressed him profoundly. "Here I am then in the Eternal City", he wrote to his brother William. "At last—for the first time—I live!" He attempted to support himself as
4953-541: The Old World (Europe), embodying a feudal civilisation that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World (United States), where people are often brash, open, and assertive , and embody the virtues of the new American society—particularly personal freedom and a more exacting moral character. James explores this clash of personalities and cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power
5080-411: The " New York Edition ", a 24-volume collection of his works. In 1910, his brother William died; Henry had just joined William from an unsuccessful search for relief in Europe, on what turned out to be Henry's last visit to the United States (summer 1910 to July 1911) and was near him when he died. In 1913, he wrote his autobiographies, A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother . After
5207-472: The 1880s was The Tragic Muse . Although he was following the precepts of Zola in his novels of the '80s, their tone and attitude are closer to the fiction of Alphonse Daudet. The lack of critical and financial success for his novels during this period led him to try writing for the theatre; His dramatic works and his experiences with theatre are discussed below. In the last quarter of 1889, "for pure and copious lucre," he started translating Port Tarascon ,
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5334-456: The 18th century. Many of them settled in eastern New York or New Jersey. All of James's ancestors were Protestant, well educated, and of character. Within their communities, they worked as farmers, merchants, and traders who were all heavily involved with their church. The last ancestor to arrive in America was William James's paternal grandfather also named William James. He came to America from Ballyjamesduff , County Cavan, Ireland in 1789 when he
5461-423: The 27-year-old Andersen in Rome in 1899, when James was 56, and wrote letters to Andersen that are intensely emotional: "I hold you, dearest boy, in my innermost love, & count on your feeling me—in every throb of your soul". In a letter of 6 May 1904, to his brother William, James referred to himself as "always your hopelessly celibate even though sexagenarian Henry". How accurate that description might have been
5588-526: The Atlantic. It drew notice perhaps mostly because it depicted a woman whose behaviour is outside the social norms of Europe. He also began his first masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady , which appeared in 1881. In 1877, he first visited Wenlock Abbey in Shropshire, home of his friend Charles Milnes Gaskell , whom he had met through Henry Adams. He was much inspired by the darkly romantic abbey and
5715-530: The Closet made a landmark difference to Jamesian scholarship by arguing that he be read as a homosexual writer whose desire to keep his sexuality a secret shaped his layered style and dramatic artistry. According to Tóibín, such a reading "removed James from the realm of dead white males who wrote about posh people. He became our contemporary." James's letters to expatriate American sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen have attracted particular attention. James met
5842-455: The Cricket ", published in 1863. About a year later, " A Tragedy of Error ", his first short story, was published anonymously. James's first literary payment was for an appreciation of Sir Walter Scott's novels, written for the North American Review . He wrote fiction and nonfiction pieces for The Nation and Atlantic Monthly , where Fields was editor. In 1865, Ernest Lawrence Godkin ,
5969-455: The English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady . His later works, such as The Ambassadors , The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in
6096-442: The French writers that he had studied assiduously. Critical reaction and sales were poor. He wrote to Howells that the books had hurt his career rather than helped because they had "reduced the desire, and demand, for my productions to zero". During this time, he became friends with Robert Louis Stevenson , John Singer Sargent , Edmund Gosse , George du Maurier , Paul Bourget , and Constance Fenimore Woolson . His third novel from
6223-513: The James household travelled to London, Paris, Geneva , Boulogne-sur-Mer , Bonn , and Newport, Rhode Island , according to the father's current interests and publishing ventures, retreating to the United States when funds were low. The James family arrived in Paris in July 1855 and took rooms at a hotel in the Rue de la Paix. Some time between 1856 and 1857, when William was fourteen and Henry thirteen,
6350-572: The New York edition of The American , James describes the development of the story in his mind as exactly such: the "situation" of an American, "some robust but insidiously beguiled and betrayed, some cruelly wronged, compatriot..." with the focus of the story being on the response of this wronged man. The Portrait of a Lady may be an experiment to see what happens when an idealistic young woman suddenly becomes very rich. In many of his tales, characters seem to exemplify alternative futures and possibilities, as most markedly in " The Jolly Corner ", in which
6477-493: The Past , were issued in 1917 in a format consistent with the original set. The entire collection was republished during the 1960s by Charles Scribner's Sons . The official title of the set was The Novels and Tales of Henry James , though the more informal title was suggested by James himself and appears as a subtitle on the series title page in each volume. It has been used almost exclusively by subsequent commentators. James wrote
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#17327796744746604-661: The Rhode Island shore, at Portsmouth Grove ; he took walks and had conversations with numerous soldiers and in later years compared this experience to those of Walt Whitman as a volunteer nurse. In the autumn of 1861, James received an injury, probably to his back, while fighting a fire. This injury, which resurfaced at times throughout his life, made him unfit for military service in the American Civil War. His younger brothers Garth Wilkinson and Robertson, however, both served, with Wilkinson serving as an officer in
6731-624: The United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka , Melville , and Bloy ; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James." James
6858-445: The brooding conscientious mentor. In The Portrait of a Lady (1881), James concluded the first phase of his career with a novel that remains his most popular piece of long fiction. The story is of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who "affronts her destiny" and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. The narrative
6985-544: The classic problems of politics: how to sustain political unity and civic virtue in the absence of war or a credible threat", and which "sounds a rallying cry for service in the interests of the individual and the nation". In simple terms, his philosophy and writings can be understood as an emphasis on "fruits over roots," a reflection of his pragmatist tendency to focus on the practical consequences of ideas rather than become mired in unproductive metaphysical arguments or fruitless attempts to ground truth in abstract ways. Ever
7112-463: The coming season. After the stresses and disappointment of these efforts, James insisted that he would write no more for the theatre, but within weeks had agreed to write a curtain-raiser for Ellen Terry . This became the one-act "Summersoft", which he later rewrote into a short story, "Covering End", and then expanded into a full-length play, The High Bid , which had a brief run in London in 1907, when James made another concerted effort to write for
7239-412: The concepts of "agreement" and "reality", the last reasoning before thoughts settle and become autonomous for us. However, he contrasts this by supporting a more practical interpretation that: a true idea or belief is one that we can blend with our thinking so that it can be justified through experiences. If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in
7366-560: The deaths of those closest to him, including his sister Alice in 1892; his friend Wolcott Balestier in 1891; and Stevenson and Fenimore Woolson in 1894. The sudden death of Fenimore Woolson in January 1894, and the speculations of suicide surrounding her death, were particularly painful for him. Leon Edel wrote that the reverberations from Fenimore Woolson's death were such that "we can read a strong element of guilt and bewilderment in his letters, and, even more, in those extraordinary tales of
7493-406: The diarist Alice James . James trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practiced medicine. Instead, he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. He wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology , education, metaphysics , psychology , religion, and mysticism . Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology , a groundbreaking text in
7620-612: The discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting . His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as " The Jolly Corner ". James published articles and books of criticism, travel , biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in
7747-563: The distracting beauty of Venice where he wrote much of The Portrait of a Lady . James excluded much of his fiction from the edition, especially many early works from the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s. Critical controversy has swirled around the exclusion of such works as Washington Square and The Europeans . Although he spent a great deal of time and effort on the edition, James' hopes for financial returns were largely disappointed. The edition sold poorly, as James lamented in his letters. To his friend Edmund Gosse , James wrote in 1915: James
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#17327796744747874-443: The empiricist, James believes we are better off evaluating the fruitfulness of ideas by testing them in the common ground of lived experience. James was remembered as one of America's representative thinkers, psychologist, and philosopher. William James was also an influential writer on religion, psychical research, and self-help. James defined true beliefs as those that prove useful to the believer. His pragmatic theory of truth
8001-632: The field of psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism , an important text in philosophy; and The Varieties of Religious Experience , an investigation of different forms of religious experience , including theories on mind-cure . William James was born at the Astor House in New York City on January 11, 1842. He was the son of Henry James Sr. , a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with
8128-401: The form of a simple story: A live squirrel supposed to be clinging on one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree's opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and
8255-483: The founder of The Nation , visited the James family at their Boston residence in Ashburton Place; the purpose of his visit was to solicit contributions from Henry Senior and Henry Junior for the inaugural issue of the journal. Henry Junior was later to describe his friendship with Godkin as "one of the longest and happiest of my life." In 1871, he published his first novel, Watch and Ward , in serial form in
8382-410: The function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatsoever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for "to be true" means only to perform this marriage-function. James held a world view in line with pragmatism , declaring that the value of any truth was utterly dependent upon its use to
8509-501: The future Supreme Court justice, and with James T. Fields and Annie Adams Fields , his first professional mentors. In 1865, Louisa May Alcott visited Boston and dined with the James family; she was to write in her journals that "Henry Jr....was very friendly. Being a literary youth he gave me advice, as if he had been eighty, and I a girl." His first published work was a review of a stage performance, "Miss Maggie Mitchell in Fanchon
8636-537: The human mind as inherently purposive and selective. President Jimmy Carter's Moral Equivalent of War Speech , on April 17, 1977, equating the United States' 1970s energy crisis , oil crisis, and the changes and sacrifices Carter's proposed plans would require with the "moral equivalent of war", may have borrowed its title and much of its theme from James's classic essay "The Moral Equivalent of War" derived from his last speech, delivered at Stanford University in 1906, and published in 1910, in which "James considered one of
8763-415: The late 1890s. His students enjoyed his brilliance and his manner of teaching was free of personal arrogance. They remember him for his kindness and humble attitude. His respectful attitude towards them speaks well of his character. Following his January 1907 retirement from Harvard, James continued to write and lecture, publishing Pragmatism , A Pluralistic Universe , and The Meaning of Truth . James
8890-677: The late style difficult and unnecessary; his friend Edith Wharton , who admired him greatly, said that some passages in his work were all but incomprehensible. James was harshly portrayed by H. G. Wells as a hippopotamus laboriously attempting to pick up a pea that had got into a corner of its cage. The "late James" style was ably parodied by Max Beerbohm in "The Mote in the Middle Distance". More important for his work overall may have been his position as an expatriate , and in other ways an outsider, living in Europe. While he came from middle-class and provincial beginnings (seen from
9017-789: The latter introducing him to the Travellers' and the Reform Clubs . He was also an honorary member of the Savile Club , St James's Club and, in 1882, the Athenaeum Club . In England, he met the leading figures of politics and culture. He continued to be a prolific writer, producing The American (1877), The Europeans (1878), a revision of Watch and Ward (1878), French Poets and Novelists (1878), Hawthorne (1879), and several shorter works of fiction. In 1878, Daisy Miller established his fame on both sides of
9144-487: The literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics. William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French. Education in the James household encouraged cosmopolitanism . The family made two trips to Europe while William James
9271-464: The man occupies the space facing the squirrel's belly, back and sides. Depending on what the debaters meant by "going round", the answer would be clear. From this example James derives the definition of the pragmatic method : to settle metaphysical disputes, one must simply make a distinction of practical consequences between notions, then, the answer is either clear, or the "dispute is idle". Both James and his colleague, Charles Sanders Peirce , coined
9398-408: The man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical problem now is this: Does the man go round the squirrel or not? James solves the issue by making a distinction between practical meaning. That is, the distinction between meanings of "round". Round in the sense that the man occupies the space north, east, south, and west of the squirrel; and round in the sense that
9525-404: The masterwork The Portrait of a Lady , his style was simple and direct (by the standards of Victorian magazine writing) and he experimented widely with forms and methods, generally narrating from a conventionally omniscient point of view. Plots generally concern romance, except for the three big novels of social commentary that conclude this period. In the second period, as noted above, he abandoned
9652-432: The meanest intelligence—I love you more than I love Others." To his New York friend Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones : "Dearest Mary Cadwalader. I yearn over you, but I yearn in vain; & your long silence really breaks my heart, mystifies, depresses, almost alarms me, to the point even of making me wonder if poor unconscious & doting old Célimare [Jones's pet name for James] has 'done' anything, in some dark somnambulism of
9779-469: The mind of the observer and the act of observation affect any empirical approach to truth. The mind, its experiences, and nature are inseparable. James's emphasis on diversity as the default human condition—over and against duality, especially Hegelian dialectical duality—has maintained a strong influence in American culture. James's description of the mind-world connection, which he described in terms of
9906-401: The need for attention on the part of the reader , the proper selections and exclusions of additional developments of the original narrative idea, the relationship between narrative art and ordinary human life, and the contrast between romanticism and realism . James also explored the origins of many of his fictions and often recounted personal experiences involved in their writing, such as
10033-509: The next half-dozen years, " The Altar of the Dead " and " The Beast in the Jungle ". The years spent on dramatic works were not entirely a loss. As he moved into the last phase of his career, he found ways to adapt dramatic techniques into the novel form. In the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, James made several trips through Europe. He spent a long stay in Italy in 1887. In 1888, he published
10160-509: The other working truths." From this, we also know that "new" truths must also correspond to already existent truths as well. From the introduction by Bruce Kuklick (1981, p. xiv) to James's Pragmatism : James went on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemological problem of truth. He would seek the meaning of "true" by examining how the idea functioned in our lives. A belief was true, he said, if it worked for all of us, and guided us expeditiously through our semihospitable world. James
10287-838: The outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he did war work. In 1915, he became a British citizen and was awarded the Order of Merit the following year. He died on 28 February 1916, in Chelsea, London , and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium . A memorial was built to him in Chelsea Old Church . He had requested that his ashes be buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts. This was not legally possible, but William's wife smuggled his ashes onboard
10414-468: The permission of James's family. Edel's portrayal of James included the suggestion he was celibate, a view first propounded by critic Saul Rosenzweig in 1943. In 1996, Sheldon M. Novick published Henry James: The Young Master , followed by Henry James: The Mature Master (2007). The first book "caused something of an uproar in Jamesian circles" as it challenged the previous received notion of celibacy,
10541-402: The person who held it. Additional tenets of James's pragmatism include the view that the world is a mosaic of diverse experiences that can only be properly interpreted and understood through an application of " radical empiricism ". Radical empiricism , not related to the everyday scientific empiricism , asserts that the world and experience can never be halted for an entirely objective analysis;
10668-461: The perspective of European polite society), he worked very hard to gain access to all levels of society, and the settings of his fiction range from working-class to aristocratic , and often describe the efforts of middle-class Americans to make their way in European capitals. He confessed he got some of his best story ideas from gossip at the dinner table or at country house weekends. He worked for
10795-497: The philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism . James's work has influenced philosophers and academics such as Alan Watts , W. E. B. Du Bois , Edmund Husserl , Bertrand Russell , Ludwig Wittgenstein , Hilary Putnam , and Richard Rorty . Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James and
10922-485: The pragmatic theory of truth applied Darwinian ideas in philosophy; it made survival the test of intellectual as well as biological fitness . James's book of lectures on pragmatism is arguably the most influential book of American philosophy . The lectures inside depict his position on the subject. In his sixth lecture, he begins by defining truth as "agreement with reality". With this, James warns that there will be disagreements between pragmatics and intellectualists over
11049-415: The presentation of conflicts of moral character, which they do not concern themselves about softening or averting. They do not indict society for these situations: they regard them as universal and inevitable. They do not even blame God for allowing them: they accept them as the conditions of life. Many of James's stories may also be seen as psychological thought experiments about selection. In his preface to
11176-460: The protagonist and a ghost-doppelganger live alternative American and European lives; and in others, like The Ambassadors, an older James seems fondly to regard his own younger self facing a crucial moment. The first period of James's fiction, usually considered to have culminated in The Portrait of a Lady , concentrated on the contrast between Europe and America. The style of these novels
11303-405: The public in a term of service, "to get the childishness knocked out of them." The other three siblings (William, Henry, and Alice James) all suffered from periods of invalidism . He took up medical studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864 (according to his brother Henry James , the author). He took a break in the spring of 1865 to join naturalist Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up
11430-637: The publication of The Portrait of a Lady through the end of the 19th century, features less popular novels, including The Princess Casamassima , published serially in The Atlantic Monthly in 1885–1886, and The Bostonians , published serially in The Century during the same period. This period also featured James's celebrated Gothic novella, The Turn of the Screw (1898). The third period of James's career reached its most significant achievement in three novels published just around
11557-558: The publication of The Europeans , Washington Square , Confidence and The Portrait of a Lady . The period from 1882 to 1883 was marked by several losses. His mother died in January 1882, while James was in Washington, D.C., on an extended visit to America. He returned to his parents' home in Cambridge , where he was together with all four of his siblings for the first time in 15 years. He returned to Europe in mid-1882, but
11684-430: The result of a kind of self-analysis, expressed in fiction, which partly freed him from his fears. Other biographers and scholars have not accepted this account, with the more common view being that of F.O. Matthiessen, who wrote: "Instead of being crushed by the collapse of his hopes [for the theatre]... he felt a resurgence of new energy." William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910)
11811-448: The revisions as heightening and deepening the effects of James' fiction. A number of biographers and critics, including Leon Edel and Michael Anesko , have discussed the construction of the edition and the compromises James made in selecting and excluding certain works due to commercial demands and his own tastes and preferences. Henry James Henry James OM ( ( 1843-04-15 ) 15 April 1843 – ( 1916-02-28 ) 28 February 1916)
11938-441: The sense of being good for so much. For how much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged. Whereby the agreement of truths with "reality" results in useful outcomes, "the 'reality' with which truths must agree has three dimensions": According to James's pragmatic approach to belief, knowledge is commonly viewed as a justified and true belief. James will accept
12065-600: The serialised novel and from 1890 to about 1897, he wrote short stories and plays. Finally, in his third and last period he returned to the long, serialised novel. Beginning in the second period, but most noticeably in the third; he increasingly abandoned direct statement in favour of frequent double negatives, and complex descriptive imagery. Single paragraphs began to run for page after page, in which an initial noun would be succeeded by pronouns surrounded by clouds of adjectives and prepositional clauses, far from their original referents, and verbs would be deferred and then preceded by
12192-439: The short novel The Aspern Papers and The Reverberator . In 1897–1898, he moved to Rye, Sussex and wrote The Turn of the Screw ; 1899–1900 had the publication of The Awkward Age and The Sacred Fount . During 1902–1904, he wrote The Wings of the Dove , The Ambassadors , and The Golden Bowl . In 1904, he revisited America and lectured on Balzac. In 1906–1910, he published The American Scene and edited
12319-472: The spirit, which has ... given you a bad moment, or a wrong impression, or a 'colourable pretext' ... However these things may be, he loves you as tenderly as ever; nothing, to the end of time, will ever detach him from you, & he remembers those Eleventh St. matutinal intimes hours, those telephonic matinées, as the most romantic of his life ..." His long friendship with American novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson , in whose house he lived for
12446-439: The stage. He wrote three new plays, two of which were in production when the death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 plunged London into mourning and theatres closed. Discouraged by failing health and the stresses of theatrical work, James did not renew his efforts in the theatre, but recycled his plays as successful novels. The Outcry was a best-seller in the United States when it was published in 1911. During 1890–1893, when he
12573-453: The start of the 20th century: The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). Critic F. O. Matthiessen called this "trilogy" James's major phase, and these novels have certainly received intense critical study. The second-written of the books, The Wings of the Dove , was the first published because it was not serialised. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with
12700-414: The suggestion of celibacy went against James's own injunction "live!"—not "fantasize!" A letter James wrote in old age to Hugh Walpole has been cited as an explicit statement of this. Walpole confessed to him of indulging in "high jinks", and James wrote a reply endorsing it: "We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art, yours & mine, what we are talking about—& the only way to know it
12827-578: The surrounding countryside, which feature in his essay "Abbeys and Castles". In particular, the gloomy monastic fishponds behind the abbey are said to have inspired the lake in The Turn of the Screw . While living in London, James continued to follow the careers of the French realists, Émile Zola in particular. Their stylistic methods influenced his own work in the years to come. Hawthorne's influence on him faded during this period, replaced by George Eliot and Ivan Turgenev. The period from 1878 to 1881 had
12954-400: The term " cash value ": When he said that the whole meaning of a (clear) conception consists in the entire set of its practical consequences, he had in mind that a meaningful conception must have some sort of experiential "cash value," must somehow be capable of being related to some sort of collection of possible empirical observations under specifiable conditions. A statement's truthfulness
13081-459: The third volume of Daudet's adventures of Tartarin de Tarascon . Serialized in Harper's Monthly from June 1890, this translation – praised as "clever" by The Spectator – was published in January 1891 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington . After the stage failure of Guy Domville in 1895, James was near despair and thoughts of death plagued him. His depression was compounded by
13208-573: The two brothers visited the Louvre and the Luxembourg Palace. Henry studied primarily with tutors, and briefly attended schools while the family travelled in Europe. A tutor of the James children in Paris, M. Lerambert, had written a volume of verse that was well reviewed by Sainte-Beuve. Their longest stays were in France, where Henry began to feel at home and became fluent in French. He had
13335-404: The vivid realisation of the three major characters: Roderick Hudson, superbly gifted but unstable and unreliable; Rowland Mallet, Roderick's limited but much more mature friend and patron; and Christina Light, one of James's most enchanting and maddening femmes fatales . The pair of Hudson and Mallet has been seen as representing the two sides of James's own nature: the wildly imaginative artist and
13462-489: The word 'true' irrelatively, whereas the pragmatist always means 'true for him who experiences the workings.'" However, James responded to critics accusing him of relativism , skepticism , or agnosticism, and of believing only in relative truths. To the contrary, he supported an epistemological realism position. Pragmatism is a philosophical approach that seeks to both define truth and resolve metaphysical issues. William James demonstrates an application of his method in
13589-418: Was 18 years old. There is suspicion that he fled to America because his family tried to force him into the ministry. After traveling to America with no money left, he found a job at a store as a clerk. After continuously working, he was able to own the store himself. As he traveled west to find more job opportunities, he was involved in various jobs such as the salt industry and the Erie Canal project. After being
13716-672: Was a synthesis of correspondence theory of truth and coherence theory of truth , with an added dimension. Truth is verifiable to the extent that thoughts and statements correspond with actual things, as well as the extent to which they "hang together", or cohere, as pieces of a puzzle might fit together; these are in turn verified by the observed results of the application of an idea to actual practice. The most ancient parts of truth … also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment
13843-480: Was also not what he wanted to do, he then announced he was going to specialize in the nervous system and psychology. James then switched in 1861 to scientific studies at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard College . In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach, and skin. He was also tone deaf . He was subject to
13970-472: Was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States , and the "Father of American psychology." Along with Charles Sanders Peirce , James established the philosophical school known as pragmatism , and
14097-449: Was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism , and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James . He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans,
14224-455: Was an inveterate reviser of his works, and for the edition he made extensive alterations in many of his fictions, especially earlier works like Roderick Hudson and The American . These revisions have also come under extensive critical scrutiny. Some commentators such as F.R. Leavis have decried the revisions as verbose and unnecessary tinkerings with the original, superior versions. Other writers such as Philip Horne have generally favored
14351-418: Was anxious to uncover what true beliefs amounted to in human life, what their "cash value" was, and what consequences they led to. A belief was not a mental entity which somehow mysteriously corresponded to an external reality if the belief were true. Beliefs were ways of acting with reference to a precarious environment, and to say they were true was to say they were efficacious in this environment. In this sense
14478-432: Was appointed instructor in physiology for the spring 1873 term, instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, full professor in 1885, endowed chair in psychology in 1889, return to philosophy in 1897, and emeritus professor of philosophy in 1907. James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and began to teach in those subjects, but
14605-497: Was back in America by the end of the year following the death of his father. Emerson, an old family friend, died in 1882. His brother Wilkie and friend Turgenev both died in 1883. In 1884, James made another visit to Paris, where he met again with Zola, Daudet, and Goncourt. He had been following the careers of the French "realist" or "naturalist" writers, and was increasingly influenced by them. In 1886, he published The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima , both influenced by
14732-469: Was born at 21 Washington Place (facing Washington Square) in New York City on 15 April 1843. His parents were Mary Walsh and Henry James Sr. His father was intelligent and steadfastly congenial. He was a lecturer and philosopher who had inherited independent means from his father, an Albany banker and investor. Mary came from a wealthy family long settled in New York City. Her sister Katherine lived with her adult family for an extended period of time. Henry Jr.
14859-632: Was buried in the family plot in Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts . He was one of the strongest proponents of the school of functionalism in psychology and of pragmatism in philosophy. He was a founder of the American Society for Psychical Research , as well as a champion of alternative approaches to healing. In 1884 and 1885 he became president of the British Society for Psychical Research for which he wrote in Mind and in
14986-585: Was drawn to the scientific study of the human mind at a time when psychology was constituting itself as a science. James's acquaintance with the work of figures like Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France facilitated his introduction of courses in scientific psychology at Harvard University . He taught his first experimental psychology course at Harvard in the 1875–1876 academic year. During his Harvard years, James joined in philosophical discussions and debates with Charles Peirce , Oliver Wendell Holmes , and Chauncey Wright that evolved into
15113-557: Was increasingly afflicted with cardiac pain during his last years. It worsened in 1909 while he worked on a philosophy text (unfinished but posthumously published as Some Problems in Philosophy ). James sailed to Europe in the spring of 1910 to take experimental treatments for his heart ailment that proved unsuccessful, and returned home on August 18. His heart failed on August 26, 1910, at his home in Chocorua, New Hampshire . He
15240-575: Was influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne . In the fall of 1875, he moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris . Aside from two trips to America, he spent the next three decades—the rest of his life—in Europe. In Paris, he met Zola , Daudet , Maupassant , Turgenev and others. He stayed in Paris only a year before settling in London, where he established relationships with Macmillan and other publishers, who paid for serial instalments that they published in book form. The audience for these serialised novels
15367-444: Was itself the symptom of some fear of or scruple against sexual love on his part." Dupee used an episode from James's memoir, A Small Boy and Others, recounting a dream of a Napoleonic image in the Louvre, to exemplify James's romanticism about Europe, a Napoleonic fantasy into which he fled. Between 1953 and 1972, Leon Edel wrote a major five-volume biography of James, which used unpublished letters and documents after Edel gained
15494-418: Was largely made up of middle-class women, and James struggled to fashion serious literary work within the strictures imposed by editors' and publishers' notions of what was suitable for young women to read. He lived in rented rooms, but was able to join gentlemen's clubs that had libraries and where he could entertain male friends. He was introduced to English society by Henry Adams and Charles Milnes Gaskell ,
15621-435: Was most engaged with the theatre, James wrote a good deal of theatrical criticism, and assisted Elizabeth Robins and others in translating and producing Henrik Ibsen for the first time in London. Leon Edel argued in his psychoanalytic biography that James was traumatised by the opening-night uproar that greeted Guy Domville , and that it plunged him into a prolonged depression. The successful later novels, in Edel's view, were
15748-668: Was one of four boys, the others being William , who was one year his senior, and younger brothers Wilkinson ( Wilkie ) and Robertson. His younger sister was Alice . Both of his parents were of Irish and Scottish descent. Before he was a year old, his father sold the house at Washington Place and took the family to Europe, where they lived for a time in a cottage in Windsor Great Park in England. The family returned to New York in 1845, and Henry spent much of his childhood living between his paternal grandmother's home in Albany, and
15875-474: Was particularly interested in what he called the "beautiful and blest nouvelle ", or the longer form of short narrative. Still, he produced a number of very short stories in which he achieved notable compression of sometimes complex subjects. The following narratives are representative of James's achievement in the shorter forms of fiction. At several points in his career, James wrote plays, beginning with one-act plays written for periodicals in 1869 and 1871 and
16002-485: Was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. James wished to pursue painting, his early artistic bent led to an apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island , but his father urged him to become a physician instead. Since this did not align with James's interests, he stated that he wanted to specialize in physiology. Once he figured this
16129-460: Was to become a celebrated literary academic in adulthood, and painter John La Farge , for whom Henry sat as a subject, and who introduced him to French literature, and in particular, to Balzac . James later called Balzac his "greatest master", and said that he had learned more about the craft of fiction from him than from anyone else. In July 1861, Henry and Thomas Sergeant Perry paid a visit to an encampment of wounded and invalid Union soldiers on
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