Introduction

Abstract

Henry James was called ‘the Master’ in his lifetime and even to his face. Given such a sobriquet, and given as well the author’s acquiescence in the bestowing of it, the reader new to James might well expect to encounter a sort of monster of literature, one of those unapproachable, statue-like writers who seems to be a breed apart, a kind of literary automaton who does nothing but produce books and who has no life outside of the pages he has written.