Born in New England, Henry James spent the last decades of his life
in Old England, specifically in Rye and London, and finally became
a British subject. Comfortably settled in Lamb House, enjoying its
rural and seaside amenities, he mingled with fellow writers
including Ford Madox Ford, H. G. Wells, Stephen Crane, and Joseph
Conrad. By examining the relationships amongst this group, as
expressed in their social behaviour and their writing, Seymour is
able to articulate with some degree of clarity what mattered to
Henry James. She also discusses the warm affection between Henry
and his psychologist brother, William. The interest of this book
occurs in the details of character and setting. Literary quarrels
and personal rivalries abound. The lives of the male writers - with
the exception of James himself - were brightened by a range of
Edwardian ladies, from the 'Angel in the House', as Virginia Woolf
scornfully described the ideal stay-at-home wife, to the neurotic
'lady novelist' (George Eliot's term) exemplified by Violet Hunt.
Because the book mainly confines itself to his life at Rye, the
issue of James's relationship with women when younger is not
addressed in any detail. For the last 20 years of his life, it is
clear that he had homo-erotic, though not homosexual, attachments.
Originally published in 1988, this paperback hasn't been
re-written. Its approach to biography is therefore one which
cheerfully seeks to recreate a historical reality, rather than one
which questions the possibility of ever achieving it. For Seymour,
James is a gentleman, and a writer of intelligence and subtlety.
The comparison with his contemporaries supports this view. (Kirkus
UK)
Henry James left London in 1897 to spend the last two decades of
his life in East Sussex where his neighbours included H. G. Wells,
Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad. In this widely
admired study Miranda Seymour aims to cut through 'the mass of
evasions ...and misrepresentations' about their relationships with
James. She finds that James was cruelly patronizing to protege
Wells and to Conrad; that he was annoyed by Ford, an incorrigible
romancer; that he envied his rich friend Edith Wharton for her wide
readership; that he snubbed Cora Taylor, Crane's lover, after she
fled America when her railway-conductor husband was found guilty of
murder. Seymour, a descendant of James's close friend, the novelist
Howard Sturgis, records how James's critiques of fellow writers
often amounted to annihilation and she chronicles his infatuations
with handsome young men, including sculptor Hendrik Andersen and
poet Rupert Brooke. In this erudite and insightful book that draws
on letters and published works, Miranda Seymour vividly recreates
the uneasy alliance of writers and personalities in this 'Rye
Mafia'.
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