Henry James

One of the master stylists of the English novel, Henry James is often thought of as having lived a life of total absorption in his craft, a life without significant outward events. But James, who combined rare qualities of aloofness and participation, of detachment and alert curiosity, was a man upon whom few experiences and observations were lost. After a restless transatlantic childhood and a brief residence in France, James settled in England, where he became one of the most traveled and sociable writers of his time. In the theme of conflict between the European and American sensibilities he found a world of heightened perceptions to which he gave lasting expression in his works. Relating many of James's best-known stories to the events and real-life characters who inspired his fiction, Harry Moore enhances our appreciation of the works themselves and of their intent creator. He makes it clear that, for James, expatriation from America was not a withdrawal from the world to which he belonged but rather the affirmation of a world he claimed--and made his own--through imagination.