Biographie de Henry James
Henry James was born in 1843 in Washington Place, New York, of Scottish and Irish ancestry. His father was a prominent theologian and philosopher, and his elder brother, William, is also famous as a philosopher. He attended schools in New York and later in London, Paris and Geneva, entering the Law School at Harvard in 1862. In 1865 he began to contribute reviews and short stories to American journals.
In 1875, after two prior visits to Europe, he settled for a year in Paris, where he met Flaubert, Turgenev and other literary figures. However, the next year he moved to London, where he became so popular in society that in the winter of 1878-9 he confessed to accepting 107 invitations. In 1898 he left London and went to live at Lamb House, Rye, Sussex. Henry James became a naturalized citizen in 1915, was awarded the Order of Merit, and died in 1916.
In addition to many short stories, plays, books of criticism, autobiography and travel, he wrote some twenty novels, the first published being Roderick Hudson (1875), They include Washington, Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, The Tragic Muse, The Spoils of Poynton, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl. Anthony Curtis read English at Oxford after the end of the Second World War.
He graduated with first-class honours and then became a literary journalist and critic. He was Literary Editor of the Financial Times from 1970 to 1990, retiring to became the paper's literary correspondent and chief book critic. He has published a number of books about Somerset Maugham and recently wrote the introduction to the Penguin edition of The Razor's Edge published in the USA. Geoffrey Moore was General Editor for the works of Henry James in Penguin Classics.
He died in 1999.