Book description
Painted by John Singer Sargent and admired by Sarah Bernhardt,
Isabella Stewart Gardner was both popular and unconventional. A
passionate art collector and philanthropist, she surrounded herself
with artists, writers and musicians, who constituted her court in both
Boston in Venice. Written between 1879 and 1914, James's letters to
her Â- whom he once described as  a locomotive Â- with a Pullman car
attachedâ Â- vary greatly in their subject-matter and tone: by turns
affectionate, ironic, gossipy and philosophical, they give us a fresh
insight into a man who to this day remains in many ways a mystery.
Henry James (1843-1916) is one of the most prominent figures of
American and British Literature. Son of a clergyman, and brother of the
philosopher and psychologist William James, he moved between America and
Europe during his early life, eventually settling in England at the age
of twenty. A prolific novelist, essayist and literary critic, James was
much concerned with questions of identity, belonging, creativity and
consciousness. He is perhaps most famous for his novels The Bostonians,
The Portrait of a Lady, Daisy Miller and What Maisie Knew, and for his
ghost story, The Turn of the Screw. Between 1906 and 1910, James revised
much of his fiction for the so-called New York Edition of his complete
works, adding now-famous Prefaces. In 1915, prompted by the First World
War, he became a British citizen; he received the Order of Merit in
1916, shortly before his death.
