Autobiographies: A Small Boy and Others / Notes of a Son and Brother / The Middle Years / Other Writings

Resumen del libro

For the 100th anniversary of his death (February 28, 2016), the most extensive collection of Henry Jamess autobiographical writings ever published offers a revelatory self-portrait from one of Americas supreme novelists and his famous family

In 1911, deeply affected by the death of his brother William the year before, Henry James began working on a book about his early life. As was customary for James in his later years, he dictated his recollections to his secretary Theodora Bosanquet, who recalled how 'a straight dive into the past brought to the surface treasure after treasure.' A Small Boy and Others (1913) and the two autobiographical books that followed--Notes of a Son and Brother (1914) and the incomplete, posthumously published The Middle Years'stand with his later novels as one of the enduring triumphs of his final years. Not only did James create one of the singular self-portraits in American literature, he also fashioned a richly detailed account of his renowned family, especially his father, the social philosopher Henry James Sr., his brother William, and his dear cousin Minny Temple, inspiration for the heroines of two of his greatest novels, The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove.

Collecting the three books of recollections and a selection of eight other personal reminiscences (and including as an appendix his secretarys insightful and affectionate memoir, 'Henry James at Work'), The Library of Americas Autobiographies is the largest and most comprehensive one-volume edition of Jamess autobiographical writings ever published. In reflecting on his youth James revisits his childhood homes in Albany and New York City and his erratic education at home and abroad, experiences anew the delights of his first pleasures attending the theater and looking at art, and recalls meetings with literary and artistic luminaries such as Emerson, George Eliot, John La Farge, and Dickens. His memories summon the mood and grandeur of nineteenth-century London and Paris and offer a vivid sense of his precocity of feeling; his account of the 'hurried disordered time' after his younger brother Wilky was wounded in combat takes the measure of how the Civil War affected him and his family. Threaded through this story of one writers beginnings is Jamess insistent, searching exploration of the origin of his genius: 'What was I thus, within and essentially, what had I ever been and could ever be but a man of imagination at the active pitch?'

Biografía del autor

Henry James (1843-1916) es una de las máximas figuras de la literatura en lengua inglesa. Además de "Washington Square", entre sus obras más conocidas se cuentan "El retrato de una dama" y "Otra vuelta de tuerca" -ambas publicadas en Alianza Editorial-, "Los papeles de Aspern" o "Las alas de la paloma". "Washington Square" fue llevada al cine por William Wyler con el título de "La heredera".