The New York City-born Henry James (1843-1916)-eminent novelist, amateur psychologist, inveterate bachelor-epitomizes, to many, the turn-of-the-century literary observer of social mores. His shrewd portraits of upper-class Anglo American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries distilled the differences between the Old World and the New, the rise of American entrepreneurship, and an aesthetically charged European sensibility. With fictional works like
Washington Square, The Turn of the Screw,
and
The Portrait of a Lady
, he displayed characters of great psychological depth, careful narrative detail, and distinctly vivid prose. With a brief biography, concise bibliographical essay, and six essays devoted to cultural context that defined him,
A Historical Guide to Henry James
offers an excellent primer to the author's fiction and the cultural milieu that influenced him.