Henry James

Henry James was the American-born novelist who spent most of his adult life in England and became the master of what he called the psychological novel — fiction as close observation of consciousness rather than action. Born in New York in 1843, the brother of philosopher William James, he published his first novel at thirty and never stopped. The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Turn of the Screw are among the most technically accomplished novels in English, and the most demanding: James's sentences enact the hesitations of minds in the act of understanding. His aphorisms reflect the same precision: deep experience is never peaceful; it takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition. He was naturalised as a British subject in 1915, months before his death, in protest at American neutrality in the First World War.