Henry James: A Life - Tapa blanda

This is the one-volume edition of a famous biography of Henry James, which includes new material.

Born in America, Henry James was educated both there and in Europe before settling in London, where he was to spend most of his life, in 1876. His novels represent the culmination of the 19th-century realist tradition of Austen, George Eliot, Flauberty and Balzac, and a decisive step towards the experimental modernism of Woolf and T.S. Eliot. His works often focus upon an innocent American in Europe, and assess the qualities and dangers of both American and European culture at the time, as well as showing their vast differences.

“A major biography”
ANITA BROOKNER, 'Spectator'

“The five-volume 'Life of Henry James' was supreme among American biographies, and the new edition is better still. The long arc of the life and work is now clearly visible, and our emotional response is guided with greater speed and force ... In a time when literary biography has degenerated into appalling catalogues of daily folly, Edel’s 'Henry James' is a sovereign example of industry, fairness and clarity. It is what few biographies manage to be – a large and truthful work of art. If the living James would have roared at the exposing eye of candour, the immortal James can only be grateful and proud”
REYNOLDS PRICE

“Henry James devoted his life to art; Leon Edel has devoted his to Henry James ... He deploys his material elegantly, deftly and lucidly, and no one can fail to admire the manner in which he maintains and pursues the thread of narrative through the maze of his erudition ... Here is high art in all its most placid and persuasive perfection. It is indeed a masterpiece”
ALLAN MASSIE, 'Scotsman'

“Edel is the most industrious and dedicated of scholars, unmatched in his control of the material, and determined so long as he has breath to continue the labours by which he has transformed our knowledge of the Master”
FRANK KERMODE, 'Guardian'

“Splendid ... Rejoice that this excellent biography is now available in one volume”
LITERARY REVIEW