Henry James

Introduction & Top Questions
Early life and works
Career—first phase
Career—middle phase
Career—final phase
Legacy

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images

Henry James, glass plate negative, c. 1910

At a Glance

Henry James summary

Quizzes

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) portrait by Carl Van Vecht April 3, 1938. Writer, folklorist and anthropologist celebrated African American culture of the rural South.

American Writers Quiz

American playwright Tennessee Williams, 1955.

Who Said It? Writers and Musicians Quiz

Related Questions

How and when did Henry James die?
How did Henry James and William Dean Howells contribute to American realism?
How did Henry James become part of London’s Victorian literary society?
How did Henry James portray conflicts between Americans and Europeans in his novels?
How did Henry James use a “central intelligence” to tell stories?
How did Henry James use a limited point of view in What Maisie Knew?
How did Henry James’s early travels in Europe shape his later writing?
How did Henry James’s later prose style differ from his earlier writing?
How did Henry James’s work help develop stream-of-consciousness writing?
How did Henry James’s years in Paris influence his work?
How did audiences respond to Henry James’s play Guy Domville?
How did the failure of Guy Domville change Henry James’s fiction-writing methods?
How do the shifting viewpoints in The Wings of the Dove affect the story?
How does The Ambassadors portray Lambert Strether’s changing view of Paris?
How does The American contrast American and French social values?
How does The Portrait of a Lady portray Isabel Archer’s independence?
How does The Princess Casamassima portray revolution and anarchist violence?
How does The Wings of the Dove avoid making its story about a dying heiress into simple melodrama?
How does Washington Square show the effects of a father’s control over his daughter?
How many volumes were included in Henry James’s New York Edition?
What conflict between art and society appears in The Tragic Muse?
What did Henry James discuss in the prefaces to the New York Edition?
What kind of education did Henry James receive as a child?
What realization does Lambert Strether reach about his own life in The Ambassadors?
What settings appeared in Henry James’s early stories about wealthy American life?
When and where was Henry James born?
When did Henry James take his first adult trip to Europe?
When was Henry James’s first short story published?
Where did Henry James live during much of his later life in England?
Which French writers did Henry James meet through Ivan Turgenev?
Which rules for fiction did Henry James reject in The Art of Fiction?
Which writers did Henry James read while he was enrolled at Harvard Law School?
Who was Henry James’s older brother William James?
Why did Henry James become a British citizen in 1915?
Why did Henry James decide that he could write better while living abroad?
Why did Henry James leave Harvard Law School without becoming a lawyer?
Why did Henry James move from Paris to London in 1876?
Why did Henry James try writing plays during the 1890s?
Why did critics object to some of Henry James’s early short stories?
Why did dictating to a typist affect the style of Henry James’s late novels?
Why does Christopher Newman fail to marry Claire de Cintré in The American?
Why had Lambert Strether been sent to Paris in The Ambassadors?
Why is The Turn of the Screw considered one of Henry James’s important ghost stories?
Who was Henry James?
Where did Henry James grow up?
When did Henry James become a writer?
How did Henry James influence the development of the novel?
What are some of Henry James’s most famous works?
How did Henry James die?
How did W. Somerset Maugham die?
What is Joan Didion known for?
What are some of Joan Didion’s most famous works?
What is John Steinbeck known for?

Literature Novels & Short Stories Novelists A-K

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External Websites

Annenberg Learner - American Passages: A Literary Survey - Henry James (1843-1916)
Poetry Foundation - Henry James
UCL Discovery - Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen. Â“Â‘No absolute privacyÂ’: Henry James and the Ethics of Reading AuthorsÂ’ Letters.Â” Authorship 1.2 (Spring/Summer 2012). Web: . Â‘No absolute privacyÂ’: Henry James and the Ethics of Reading AuthorsÂ’ Letters (PDF)
Project MUSE - Henry James (PDF)
The Victorian Web - Henry James (1843-1916)
BBC - Arts and Ideas - Proms Extra: Henry James and Italy

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Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Henry James - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Henry James

American writer

Written by

Leon Edel

Henry James Professor of English and American Letters, New York University, New York City, 1966–72. Citizens' Professor of English Literature, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, 1972–78. Author of...

Leon Edel

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Oct. 29, 2026 •History

Henry James (born April 15, 1843, New York, New York, U.S.—died February 28, 1916, London, England) was an American novelist and, as a naturalized English citizen from 1915, a great figure in the transatlantic culture. His fundamental theme was the innocence and exuberance of the New World in clash with the corruption and wisdom of the Old, as illustrated in such works as Daisy Miller (1879), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886),...

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