James, Henry (1843-1916), American expatriate writer, whose masterly fiction juxtaposed American innocence and European experience in a series of intense, psychologically complex works. James's work is characterized by leisurely pacing and subtle delineation of character rather than by dramatic incidents or complicated plots. His major writings, highly sensitive examples of the objective psychological novel, deal with the world of leisure and sophistication he had grown to know intimately in Europe. 

Henry, the younger brother of philosopher William James, was born in New York City and educated in New York, London, Paris, and Geneva. In 1875 he settled permanently in England, and in 1915 he became a British subject. While still in his early 20s he began to contribute short stories and articles to American periodicals. The American novelist William Dean Howells encouraged him and introduced his work to the magazine The Atlantic Monthly. 

In his early novels and tales, James's theme was the impact of European culture on Americans traveling or living abroad. Examples from this phase are Roderick Hudson (1876), The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1879), and The Portrait of a Lady (1881). In time James began to explore the types and manners of the English scene, as in The Tragic Muse (1890), The Spoils of Poynton (1897), and The Awkward Age (1899). His last three great novels, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904), again take up the theme of contrast between American and European societies. In general, the style of his later works is complex, with the motives and behavior of his characters revealed obliquely by means of their conversations and through their minute observations of one another. Although meaningful dialogue is characteristic of his literary style, James's stage writings were failures. However, several of his works have been successfully dramatized and adapted for films, including two of his many tales, "The Aspern Papers" (1888) and "The Turn of the Screw" (1898), and two of his most famous novels, The Europeans (1878) and Washington Square (1881). 

James was a prolific author, and his writing includes, in addition to fiction, a substantial body of literary criticism and travel essays, notably English Hours (1905) and The American Scene (1907), impressions of his native country after an absence of 20 years. His letters, edited by the American scholar Leon Edel, were published in four volumes (1974-1984). James's reputation as a major force in English and American literature was not firmly established until the 1940s. Particularly responsible for increased interest in James is Edel's prizewinning five-volume biography Life of Henry James (1953-1972). In 1976 a plaque was dedicated to James in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.       
                                                                        
"James, Henry"                                            
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