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Henry James was born on 15th April 1843 in Washington Place, New York to a wealthy and intellectual family and as a youth travelled between Europe and America and studied with tutors in Geneva, London, Paris, Bologna and Bonn. He briefly and unsuccessfully studied law at Harvard but decided he preferred reading and writing fiction to studying law. His first novel, Watch and Ward, was published in 1871 after first appearing serially in Atlantic Monthly. After a brief period in Paris, James moved first to London and then later to Rye in Sussex. He became a British citizen in 1915 to declare his loyalty to his adopted country as well as to protest against America's refusal to enter the war on behalf of Britain. Henry James was a prolific writer and critic and from around 1875 until his death he maintained a strenuous schedule of publications in a variety of genres- novels, short story collections, literary criticism, travel writing, biography and autobiography. He died in 1916.
One of the least known of James' novels - and yet the only one that is uniformly American, Boston rejected it as a satire unflattering to their ego; in those days apparently Boston banning could break - not make - a book. Perhaps the American literary taste of the period could not relish the astringent quality of the book, the irony and the criticism of the American way of life. Today it reads as one of his most modern books, well worth this re-introduction, in a year when James appears to be again coming into his own. (Kirkus Reviews)
