The Best of Henry James

Henry James was one of the most influential English language writers of the modern era. Nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature three times during his life, James was known for providing in his novels and stories profound portraits of human character, of the relations between genders, and of the moral conflicts and myriad cruelties of middle- and upper-class society in America, England, and Europe. No fiction writer of his time wrote with greater insight about the social and psychological existences of women and girls, nor about the power conferred by money and the vulnerability conferred by lacking it.

James’s 45-year writing career spanned the era of professionalization, and James pursued authorship with unsurpassed professionalism. Devoted to writing, he published a voluminous collection of novels, novellas, stories, plays, travel narratives, autobiographies, biographies, and literary criticism, and produced more than 10,000 letters. In highlighting the distinctiveness of James’s prose, characters, and plots, his contemporary, the editor and author , noted that James was not, “a novelist…after any fashion but his own,” and would be compelled to create his own readership. The fact that his, , , and , who all declared his work indispensable to their own, confirms that James introduced something new and lasting into the literary canon.