Introduction: Biographical and Historical Contexts

Abstract

On April 15, 1843, Henry James was born into what was to be one of the most intellectually powerful families in the United States. The original James emigrated from Ireland shortly after the American Revolution. He married three times (his first two wives died relatively young) and fathered thirteen children, among them a son named Henry, born and reared in Albany, New York. That Henry, usually referred to now as Henry Sr. because of his more famous son of the same name, eventually settled in New York City with his wife, Mary. There they had five children: William (1842–1910), Henry Jr. (1843–1916), Garth Wilkinson (1845–1883), Robertson (1846–1910), and Alice (1848–1892). Henry Jr., the author of The Turn of the Screw, is the subject of this sketch, but to understand his life we need to know something about the siblings with whom he grew up and with whom he corresponded for most of their lives.¹