Book description
Something or other lay in wait for him, amid the twists and turns of
the months and the years, like a crouching beast in the jungle. Henry
James s devastating and profoundly moving novella is the story of John
Marcher, a man who, for as long as he can remember, has been obsessed by
the feeling that some life-changing even catastrophic event lies in
wait for him like a jungle animal. Then the tragic day arrives on which
the terrible true nature of the beast is revealed. Henry James was
born in 1843 in New York, of Scottish and Irish ancestry. His father was
a prominent theologian and philosopher and his elder brother, William,
was also famous as a philosopher. He attended schools in New York and
later in London, Paris and Geneva, entering the Law School at Harvard in
1862. In 1865 he began to contribute reviews and short stories to
American journals. In 1875, after two prior visits to Europe, he settled
in Paris, where he met Flaubert, Turgenev and other literary figures.
However, the next year he moved to London, where he became so popular in
society that in the winter of 1878 9 he confessed to accepting 107
invitations. He wrote some twenty highly popular and influential novels,
including The Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians. He became a
naturalized citizen in 1915, was awarded the Order of Merit and died in
London in 1916.
