Editing Henry James (section)

==Life==

===Early years, 1843–1883===
[[File:Henry James Sr. and Henry James Jr. in 1854.jpg|thumb|Henry James, age 11, with his father, [[Henry James Sr.]] – 1854 [[daguerreotype]] by [[Mathew Brady]]]]
James was born at 21 Washington Place (facing Washington Square) in [[New York City]] on 15 April 1843. His parents were Mary Walsh and Henry James Sr. His father was intelligent and steadfastly congenial. He was a lecturer and philosopher who had inherited independent means from his father, William James, a farmer from Corkish, County Cavan, Ireland,<ref>[https://www.anglocelt.ie/2010/07/08/bailieborough-400-celebrations-continue-with-henry-james-events/]</ref> who had emigrated to [[Albany, New York|Albany]] and became the second richest man in the state after [[John Jacob Astor]] through banking and real estate. Mary came from a wealthy family long settled in New York City. Her sister Katherine lived with her adult family for an extended period of time. Henry Jr. was one of four boys, the others being [[William James|William]], who was one year his senior, and younger brothers Wilkinson ([[Wilkie James|Wilkie]]) and Robertson. His younger sister was [[Alice James|Alice]]. Both of his parents were of Irish and Scottish descent.<ref>Kaplan, Fred. ''Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, A Biography''. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. {{ISBN?}}</ref>

Before he was a year old, his father sold the house at Washington Place and took the family to Europe, where they lived for a time in a cottage in [[Windsor Great Park]] in England. The family returned to New York in 1845, and Henry spent much of his childhood living between his paternal grandmother's home in Albany, and a house, 58 West [[14th Street (Manhattan)|Fourteenth Street]], in Manhattan.<ref>{{cite book| title=Henry James Letters Vol. 1: 1843–1875| author=Leon Edel| publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University| year=1974| pages=3–4}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=89}}</ref> A painting of a view of Florence by Thomas Cole hung in the front parlor of this house on West Fourteenth.<ref name=":1" /> His education was calculated by his father to expose him to many influences, primarily scientific and philosophical; it was described by Percy Lubbock, the editor of his selected letters, as "extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous."<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=3VQ-AQAAIAAJ ''Letters of William James'', p. 3]</ref> Once, a cousin of the James family came down to the house in Fourteenth Street and, one evening during his stay, read the first installment of ''[[David Copperfield]]'' aloud to the elders of the family: Henry Junior had sneaked down from his bedroom to listen surreptitiously to the reading, until a scene involving the Murdstones led him to "loud[ly] sob," whereupon he was discovered and sent back to bed.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=98}}</ref>

Between 1855 and 1860, the James household travelled to London, Paris, [[Geneva]], [[Boulogne-sur-Mer]], [[Bonn]], and [[Newport, Rhode Island]], according to the father's current interests and publishing ventures, retreating to the United States when funds were low.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=119–157}}</ref> The James family arrived in Paris in July 1855 and took rooms at a hotel in the Rue de la Paix.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=120}}</ref> Some time between 1856 and 1857, when William was fourteen and Henry thirteen, the two brothers visited the Louvre and the Luxembourg Palace.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=157}}</ref> Henry studied primarily with tutors, and briefly attended schools while the family travelled in Europe. A tutor of the James children in Paris, M. Lerambert, had written a volume of verse that was well reviewed by Sainte-Beuve.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=128}}</ref> Their longest stays were in France, where Henry began to feel at home and became fluent in French.<ref name=":0" /> He had a stutter, which seems to have manifested itself only when he spoke English; in French, he did not stutter.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://labos.ulg.ac.be/cipa/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2015/07/18_campbell.pdf|title=The Man Who Talked Like a Book, Wrote Like He Spoke|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171228172702/http://labos.ulg.ac.be/cipa/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2015/07/18_campbell.pdf|archive-date=28 December 2017|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Henry James at age16.JPG|thumb|left|120px|James, age 16]]

In the summer of 1857, the James family went to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where they set up house at No. 20 Rue Neuve Chaussée, and where Henry was a regular customer at an English lending library.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=132}}</ref> In the autumn of that year, Henry Senior wrote from Boulogne to a friend that "Henry is not so fond of study, properly so-called, as of reading...He is a devourer of libraries, and an immense writer of novels and dramas. He has considerable talent as a writer, but I am at a loss to know whether he will ever accomplish much."<ref name=":2" /> William recorded in a letter to their parents in Paris, while the boys were staying in Bonn, that Henry and Garth Wilkinson would wrestle "when study has made them dull and sleepy."<ref name=":0" />

In 1860, the family returned to Newport. There, Henry befriended [[Thomas Sergeant Perry]], who was to become a celebrated literary academic in adulthood, and painter [[John La Farge]], for whom Henry sat as a subject, and who introduced him to French literature, and in particular, to [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Leon |first=Edel |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=163}}</ref> James later called Balzac his "greatest master", and said that he had learned more about the craft of fiction from him than from anyone else.<ref name="Powers 1970, p. 11">{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=11}}</ref>

In July 1861, Henry and Thomas Sergeant Perry paid a visit to an encampment of wounded and invalid Union soldiers on the Rhode Island shore, at [[Melville, Rhode Island|Portsmouth Grove]]; he took walks and had conversations with numerous soldiers and in later years compared this experience to those of [[Walt Whitman]] as a volunteer nurse.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=169–170}}</ref> In the autumn of 1861, James received an injury, probably to his back, while fighting a fire. This injury, which resurfaced at times throughout his life, made him unfit for military service in the American Civil War.<ref name="Powers 1970, p. 11"/> His younger brothers Garth Wilkinson and Robertson, however, both served, with Wilkinson serving as an officer in the [[54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment|54th Massachusetts]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=185}}</ref>

In 1864, the James family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to be near William, who had enrolled first in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard and then in the medical school. In 1862, Henry attended [[Harvard Law School]], but realised that he was not interested in studying law. He pursued his interest in literature and associated with authors and critics [[William Dean Howells]] and [[Charles Eliot Norton]] in Boston and Cambridge and formed lifelong friendships with [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.]], the future Supreme Court justice, and with [[James T. Fields]] and [[Annie Adams Fields]], his first professional mentors. In 1865, [[Louisa May Alcott]] visited Boston and dined with the James family; she was to write in her journals that "Henry Jr....was very friendly. Being a literary youth he gave me advice, as if he had been eighty, and I a girl."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=213}}</ref>

His first published work was a review of a stage performance, "Miss Maggie Mitchell in ''Fanchon the Cricket''", published in 1863.<ref>{{harvp|Novick|1996|p=431}}</ref> About a year later, "[[A Tragedy of Error]]", his first short story, was published anonymously. James's first literary payment was for an appreciation of Sir Walter Scott's novels, written for the ''[[North American Review]]''. He wrote fiction and nonfiction pieces for ''[[The Nation]]'' and ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'', where Fields was editor. In 1865, [[Edwin Lawrence Godkin|Ernest Lawrence Godkin]], the founder of ''The Nation'', visited the James family at their Boston residence in Ashburton Place; the purpose of his visit was to solicit contributions from Henry Senior and Henry Junior for the inaugural issue of the journal.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=221–223}}</ref> Henry Junior was later to describe his friendship with Godkin as "one of the longest and happiest of my life."<ref name=":3" /> In 1871, he published his first novel, ''[[Watch and Ward]]'', in serial form in the ''Atlantic Monthly''. The novel was later published in book form in 1878.

During a 14-month trip through Europe in 1869–70, he met [[John Ruskin]], [[Charles Dickens]], [[Matthew Arnold]], [[William Morris]], and [[George Eliot]]. Rome impressed him profoundly. "Here I am then in the Eternal City", he wrote to his brother William. "At last—for the first time—I live!"<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=12}}</ref> He attempted to support himself as a freelance writer in Rome and then secured a position as Paris correspondent for the ''New York Tribune'' through the influence of its editor, [[John Hay]]. When these efforts failed, he returned to New York City. During 1874 and 1875, he published ''Transatlantic Sketches'', ''[[A Passionate Pilgrim]]'' and ''[[Roderick Hudson]]''. In 1875, James wrote for ''The Nation'' every week; he received anywhere from $3 to $10 for brief paragraphs, $12 to $25 for book reviews and $25 to $40 for travel articles and lengthier items.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edel |first=Leon |title=Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870 |date=1953 |publisher=Avon Books |pages=223}}</ref> During this early period in his career, he was influenced by [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]].<ref name="harvp|Powers|1970|p=16">{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=16}}</ref>

In the fall of 1875, he moved to the [[Latin Quarter, Paris|Latin Quarter of Paris]]. Aside from two trips to America, he spent the next three decades—the rest of his life—in Europe. In Paris, he met [[Émile Zola|Zola]], [[Alphonse Daudet|Daudet]], [[Guy de Maupassant|Maupassant]], [[Ivan Turgenev|Turgenev]] and others.<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=14}}</ref> He stayed in Paris only a year before settling in London, where he established relationships with Macmillan and other publishers, who paid for serial instalments that they published in book form. The audience for these serialised novels was largely made up of middle-class women, and James struggled to fashion serious literary work within the strictures imposed by editors' and publishers' notions of what was suitable for young women to read. He lived in rented rooms, but was able to join gentlemen's clubs that had libraries and where he could entertain male friends. He was introduced to English society by [[Henry Adams]] and [[Charles Milnes Gaskell]], the latter introducing him to the [[Travellers Club|Travellers']] and the [[Reform Club]]s.<ref name="Gamble 2008">Gamble, Cynthia J. (2008). ''John Ruskin, Henry James and the Shropshire Lads'', London: New European Publications</ref><ref>Gamble, Cynthia J. (2015). ''Wenlock Abbey 1857–1919: A Shropshire Country House and the Milnes Gaskell Family''. London: Ellingham Press.</ref> He was also an honorary member of the [[Savile Club]], [[St James's Club]] and, in 1882, the [[Athenaeum Club, London|Athenaeum Club]].<ref>{{cite book|first=Frank Richard |last=Cowell |title=The Athenaeum: Club and Social Life in London, 1824–1974 |location=London |publisher=Heinemann |date=1975 |isbn=0-435-32010-6 |url={{Google books|cPW3AAAAIAAJ|page=33|text="Henry+James"|plainurl=true}}|page=33}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Humphry |last=Ward |authorlink=Thomas Humphry Ward |title=History of the Athenaeum 1824–1925 |location=London |date=1926|url=https://archive.org/details/historyofathenum0000ward/page/277/mode/1up|page=277}}</ref>

In England, he met the leading figures of politics and culture. He continued to be a prolific writer, producing ''[[The American (novel)|The American]]'' (1877), ''[[The Europeans]]'' (1878), a revision of ''Watch and Ward'' (1878), ''[[French Poets and Novelists]]'' (1878), ''[[Hawthorne (book)|Hawthorne]]'' (1879), and several shorter works of fiction. In 1878, ''[[Daisy Miller]]'' established his fame on both sides of the Atlantic. It drew notice perhaps mostly because it depicted a woman whose behaviour is outside the social norms of Europe. He also began his first masterpiece,<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=15}}</ref> ''[[The Portrait of a Lady]]'', which appeared in 1881.

In 1877, he first visited [[Wenlock Abbey]] in Shropshire, home of his friend [[Charles Milnes Gaskell]], whom he had met through Henry Adams. He was much inspired by the darkly romantic abbey and the surrounding countryside, which feature in his essay "Abbeys and Castles".<ref name="Gamble 2008"/> In particular, the gloomy monastic fishponds behind the abbey are said to have inspired the lake in ''[[The Turn of the Screw]]''.<ref>Gamble, Cynthia, 2015 Wenlock Abbey 1857–1919: A Shropshire Country House and the Milnes Gaskell Family, Ellingham Press.</ref>

While living in London, James continued to follow the careers of the French realists, Émile Zola in particular. Their stylistic methods influenced his own work in the years to come.<ref name="harvp|Powers|1970|p=17">{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=17}}</ref> Hawthorne's influence on him faded during this period, replaced by George Eliot and Ivan Turgenev.<ref name="harvp|Powers|1970|p=16"/> The period from 1878 to 1881 had the publication of ''The Europeans'', ''[[Washington Square (novel)|Washington Square]]'', ''[[Confidence (novel)|Confidence]]'' and ''[[The Portrait of a Lady]]''.

The period from 1882 to 1883 was marked by several losses. His mother died in January 1882, while James was in Washington, D.C., on an extended visit to America.<ref>{{cite book| title=The Letters of Henry James Vol. 2: 1875–1883| author=Leon Edel| publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University| year=1975| pages=376–377}}</ref> He returned to his parents' home in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]], where he was together with all four of his siblings for the first time in 15 years.<ref>Edel, 1975; p. 379</ref> He returned to Europe in mid-1882, but was back in America by the end of the year following the death of his father. Emerson, an old family friend, died in 1882. His brother Wilkie and friend Turgenev both died in 1883.

===Middle years, 1884–1897===

In 1884, James made another visit to Paris, where he met again with Zola, Daudet, and Goncourt. He had been following the careers of the French "realist" or "naturalist" writers, and was increasingly influenced by them.<ref name="harvp|Powers|1970|p=17"/> In 1886, he published ''[[The Bostonians]]'' and ''[[The Princess Casamassima]]'', both influenced by the French writers that he had studied assiduously. Critical reaction and sales were poor. He wrote to Howells that the books had hurt his career rather than helped because they had "reduced the desire, and demand, for my productions to zero".<ref>Edel 1955, p. 55.</ref> During this time, he became friends with [[Robert Louis Stevenson]], [[John Singer Sargent]], [[Edmund Gosse]], [[George du Maurier]], [[Paul Bourget]], and [[Constance Fenimore Woolson]]. His third novel from the 1880s was ''[[The Tragic Muse]]''. Although he was following the precepts of Zola in his novels of the '80s, their tone and attitude are closer to the fiction of Alphonse Daudet.<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=19}}</ref> The lack of critical and financial success for his novels during this period led him to try writing for the theatre;<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=20}}</ref> His dramatic works and his experiences with theatre are discussed below.

In the last quarter of 1889, "for pure and copious lucre,"<ref>Letter to [[Grace Norton]], 22 Septembre 1890. Quoted in E. Harden, ''A Henry James Chronology'', p. 85.</ref> he started translating ''Port Tarascon'', the third volume of Daudet's adventures of [[Tartarin|Tartarin of Tarascon]]. Serialized in ''[[Harper's Magazine|Harper's Monthly]]'' from June 1890, this translation – praised as "clever" by ''[[The Spectator]]''<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=jkg9AQAAIAAJ&lpg=PA147 Port Tarascon], ''Literary supplement to The Spectator'', n°3266, 31 January 1891, p. 147.</ref> – was published in January 1891 by [[Sampson Low|Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington]].

After the stage failure of ''[[Guy Domville]]'' in 1895, James was near despair and thoughts of death plagued him.<ref>{{harvp|Powers|1970|p=28}}</ref> His depression was compounded by the deaths of those closest to him, including his sister Alice in 1892; his friend [[Wolcott Balestier]] in 1891; and Stevenson and Fenimore Woolson in 1894. The sudden death of Fenimore Woolson in January 1894, and the speculations of suicide surrounding her death, were particularly painful for him.<ref name="Woolson">{{cite book| title=Henry James Letters Vol. 3: 1883–1895| author=Leon Edel| publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University| year=1980| page=xvii–xviii}}</ref> Leon Edel wrote that the reverberations from Fenimore Woolson's death were such that "we can read a strong element of guilt and bewilderment in his letters, and, even more, in those extraordinary tales of the next half-dozen years, "[[The Altar of the Dead]]" and "[[The Beast in the Jungle]]".<ref name="Woolson"/>

The years spent on dramatic works were not entirely a loss. As he moved into the last phase of his career, he found ways to adapt dramatic techniques into the novel form. In the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, James made several trips through Europe. He spent a long stay in Italy in 1887. In 1888, he published the short novel ''[[The Aspern Papers]]'' and ''[[The Reverberator]]''.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Henry James |date=2002 |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |isbn=978-0-7910-6352-1 |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |series=Bloom's major novelists |location=Broomall, PA |pages=108}}</ref>

===Late years, 1898–1916===
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In 1897–1898, he moved to [[Rye, East Sussex|Rye, Sussex]] and wrote ''[[The Turn of the Screw]]''; 1899–1900 had the publication of ''[[The Awkward Age]]'' and ''[[The Sacred Fount]]''. During 1902–1904, he wrote ''[[The Wings of the Dove]],'' ''[[The Ambassadors]]'', and ''[[The Golden Bowl]]''.

In 1904, he revisited America and lectured on Balzac. In 1906–1910, he published ''[[The American Scene]]'' and edited the "[[New York Edition]]", a 24-volume collection of his works. In 1910, his brother William died; Henry had just joined William from an unsuccessful search for relief in Europe, on what turned out to be Henry's last visit to the United States (summer 1910 to July 1911) and was near him when he died.<ref>Kaplan chapter 15.</ref>

In 1913, he wrote his autobiographies, ''[[A Small Boy and Others]]'' and ''[[Notes of a Son and Brother]]''. After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he did war work. In 1915, he became a British citizen and was awarded the [[Order of Merit]] the following year. He died on 28 February 1916, in [[Chelsea, London]], and was cremated at [[Golders Green Crematorium]]. A memorial was built to him in [[Chelsea Old Church]]. He had requested that his ashes be buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts.<ref>Wilson, Scott. ''Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons'', 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 23458–23459). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.</ref> This was not legally possible, but William's wife smuggled his ashes onboard a ship and sneaked them through customs, allowing her to bury him in their family plot.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gunter |title=Alice in Jamesland: The Story of Alice Howe Gibbens James |date=January 2009 |isbn=978-0803222755 |page=304|publisher=U of Nebraska Press }}</ref>

===Sexuality===
James regularly rejected suggestions that he should marry, and after settling in London, proclaimed himself "a bachelor". [[F. W. Dupee]], in several volumes on the James family, originated the theory that he had been in love with his cousin, Mary ("Minnie") Temple, but that a neurotic fear of sex kept him from admitting such affections: "James's invalidism&nbsp;... was itself the symptom of some fear of or scruple against sexual love on his part." Dupee used an episode from James's memoir, ''A Small Boy and Others,'' recounting a dream of a Napoleonic image in the Louvre, to exemplify James's romanticism about Europe, a Napoleonic fantasy into which he fled.<ref>Dupee (1949){{clarify|reason=What book is this? I'm not finding it in the list of references|date=January 2014}}</ref><ref name="Dupee 1951">Dupee (1951)</ref>

Between 1953 and 1972, [[Leon Edel]] wrote a major five-volume biography of James, which used unpublished letters and documents after Edel gained the permission of James's family. Edel's portrayal of James included the suggestion he was celibate, a view first propounded by critic [[Saul Rosenzweig]] in 1943.<ref>Graham, Wendy "Henry James's Twarted Love", Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 10</ref> In 1996, Sheldon M. Novick published ''Henry James: The Young Master'', followed by ''Henry James: The Mature Master'' (2007). The first book "caused something of an uproar in Jamesian circles"<ref name="auto">{{cite news|last=Leavitt|first=David|author-link=David Leavitt|title=A Beast in the Jungle|date=23 December 2007|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/books/review/Leavitt2-t.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170519044221/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/books/review/Leavitt2-t.html|archive-date=19 May 2017}}</ref> as it challenged the previous received notion of celibacy, a once-familiar paradigm in biographies of homosexuals when direct evidence was nonexistent. Novick also criticised Edel for following the discounted Freudian interpretation of homosexuality "as a kind of failure."<ref name="auto"/> The difference of opinion erupted in a series of exchanges between Edel (and later [[Fred Kaplan (biographer)|Fred Kaplan]] filling in for Edel) and Novick, which were published by the online magazine ''[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]'', with Novick arguing that even the suggestion of celibacy went against James's own injunction "live!"—not "fantasize!"<ref>{{cite magazine|title= Henry James' Love Life|magazine= [[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]|date= 24 January 1997|url= https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1997/01/henry-james-love-life-8.html|access-date=29 May 2021}}</ref>

A letter James wrote in old age to [[Hugh Walpole]] has been cited as an explicit statement of this. Walpole confessed to him of indulging in "high jinks", and James wrote a reply endorsing it: "We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art, yours & mine, what we are talking about—& the only way to know it is to have lived & loved & cursed & floundered & enjoyed & suffered—I don't think I regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth".<ref>Leavitt, David, 'A Beast in the Jungle', ''The New York Times'', 23 December 2007</ref>

The interpretation of James as living a less austere emotional life has been subsequently explored by other scholars.<ref>Graham, Wendy "Henry James's Thwarted Love"; Bradley, John "Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire"; Haralson, Eric "Henry James and Queer Modernity".</ref> The often intense politics of Jamesian scholarship has also been the subject of studies.<ref>Anesko, Michael "Monopolizing the Master: Henry James and the Politics of Modern Literary Scholarship", Stanford University Press</ref> Author [[Colm Tóibín]] has said that [[Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick]]'s ''Epistemology of the Closet'' made a landmark difference to Jamesian scholarship by arguing that he be read as a homosexual writer whose desire to keep his sexuality a secret shaped his layered style and dramatic artistry. According to Tóibín, such a reading "removed James from the realm of [[dead white male]]s who wrote about posh people. He became our contemporary."<ref>{{cite news|first=Colm|last=Tóibín|author-link=Colm Tóibín|title=How Henry James's family tried to keep him in the closet|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=20 February 2016|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/colm-toibin-how-henry-james-family-tried-to-keep-him-in-the-closet|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170528114825/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/colm-toibin-how-henry-james-family-tried-to-keep-him-in-the-closet|archive-date=28 May 2017}}</ref>

James's letters to expatriate American sculptor [[Hendrik Christian Andersen]] have attracted particular attention. James met the 27-year-old Andersen in Rome in 1899, when James was 56, and wrote letters to Andersen that are intensely emotional: "I hold you, dearest boy, in my innermost love, & count on your feeling me—in every throb of your soul". In a letter of 6 May 1904, to his brother William, James referred to himself as "always your hopelessly celibate even though sexagenarian Henry".<ref>Ignas Skrupskelis and Elizabeth Berkeley, eds. (1994), p. 271.</ref><ref>Ignas Skrupskelis and Elizabeth Berkeley, eds. (1997), ''William and Henry James: Selected Letters'', The University Press of Virginia, p. 447.</ref> How accurate that description might have been is the subject of contention among James's biographers,<ref name="Edel pp. 306-316">Edel, 306–316 {{clarify|reason=What is the Edel book that this refers to?|date=January 2014}}</ref> but the letters to Andersen were occasionally quasierotic: "I put, my dear boy, my arm around you, & feel the pulsation, thereby, as it were, of our excellent future & your admirable endowment."<ref>Zorzi (2004)</ref>

His numerous letters to the many young [[homosexual men]] among his close male friends are more forthcoming. To his homosexual friend [[Howard Sturgis]], James could write: "I repeat, almost to indiscretion, that I could live with you. Meanwhile, I can only try to live without you."<ref>{{harvp|Gunter|Jobe|2001}}</ref> In another letter Sturgis, following a long visit, James refers jocularly to their "happy little congress of two".<ref>{{harvp|Gunter|Jobe|2001|p=125}}</ref> In letters to Hugh Walpole, he pursues convoluted jokes and puns about their relationship, referring to himself as an elephant who "paws you oh so benevolently" and winds about Walpole his "well-meaning old trunk".<ref>{{harvp|Gunter|Jobe|2001|p=179}}</ref> His letters to [[Walter Van Rensselaer Berry|Walter Berry]] printed by the [[Black Sun Press]] have long been celebrated for their lightly veiled eroticism.<ref>''Letters of Henry James to Walter Berry'', Black Sun Press (1928).</ref>

However, James corresponded in equally extravagant language with his many female friends, writing, for example, to fellow novelist [[Lucy Clifford]]: "Dearest Lucy! What shall I say? when I love you so very, very much, and see you nine times for once that I see Others! Therefore I think that—if you want it made clear to the meanest intelligence—I love you more than I love Others."<ref>Demoor and Chisholm (1999) p. 79</ref> To his New York friend [[Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones]]: "Dearest Mary Cadwalader. I yearn over you, but I yearn in vain; & your long silence really breaks my heart, mystifies, depresses, almost alarms me, to the point even of making me wonder if poor unconscious & doting old Célimare [Jones's pet name for James] has 'done' anything, in some dark somnambulism of the spirit, which has&nbsp;... given you a bad moment, or a wrong impression, or a 'colourable pretext'&nbsp;... However these things may be, he loves you as tenderly as ever; nothing, to the end of time, will ever detach him from you, & he remembers those Eleventh St. matutinal ''intimes'' hours, those telephonic matinées, as the most romantic of his life&nbsp;..."<ref>{{harvp|Gunter|2000|p=146}}</ref> His long friendship with American novelist [[Constance Fenimore Woolson]], in whose house he lived for a number of weeks in Italy in 1887, and his shock and grief over her suicide in 1894, are discussed in detail in Edel's biography and play a central role in a study by [[Lyndall Gordon]]. Edel conjectured that Woolson was in love with James and killed herself in part because of his coldness, but Woolson's biographers have objected to Edel's account.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Torsney |first=Cheryl B. |title=Constance Fenimore Woolson: the grief of artistry |date=1989 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-1101-2 |location=Athens |pages=15}}</ref>