Genuine Reality (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Linda Simon
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Biography
- Time of Work: 1800-1910
- Setting: New York, Massachusetts, England, and Western Europe
- Principal Characters: William James, Henry James, Sr., Mary Walsh James, Henry James, Jr., Alice Gibbens James
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Parents and children, Philosophy or philosophers, Pragmatism, Psychology or psychologists, Religion, Fathers, Medicine, Life and death, Learning or scholarship
- Locales: Europe, New York, England, Massachusetts
The popularity of the James family as subjects for biography has held steady throughout the twentieth century. A number of factors account for this phenomenon. First, it is one of the few nuclear families to produce two giants of American letters, William James in philosophy and psychology and Henry James, Jr., in fiction. Second, its members wrote to one another frequently and at length not only about their everyday affairs but also about their feelings regarding family conflicts. Hence, the plethora of source materials, coupled with the stature of the two brothers, has led a number of...
[The entire page is 1920 words long]
