Henry James was the final survivor of a remarkable family, and his memoir, written at
the end of a long and tireless career, was prompted initially by the death of his "ideal Elder
Brother," the psychologist and philosopher William James. A Small Boy and
Others recounts the novelist's earliest years in Albany and, more importantly, New
York City, where he was allowed to wander at will. He evokes the theatrical entertainments he
enjoyed, the varied social scene in which the family mixed, and the piecemeal nature of his
education. With the first of several extended trips, the "romance" of Europe begins as the
small boy becomes acquainted with a British culture already familiar from his precocious reading of
the great Victorian novelists. And it is in France, in the Louvre's Galerie d'Apollon,
that he undergoes an initiation into the aesthetic power of great art and an intimation of all the
"fun" it might bring him. Yet the child also registered, within this privileged and
extended family group, signs of dysfunction and failure. James's autobiography has
significantly determined the nature and even the terms of the extensive biographical and critical
interest he continues to enjoy. This first fully annotated critical edition of A Small Boy
and Others, which guides the reader through the allusive complexities of James's
prose, also offers fresh insights into the formative years of one of literature's most
influential figures.
Copyright:
2011
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780813930893
Related ISBNs:
9780813930824
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
05/07/13
Copyrighted By:
the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia