James, Henry
Entry updated 15 June 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1843-1916) US author, in UK from 1876, naturalizing in 1915; active from the early 1860s. A central figure in the late evolution of the Modernist nonfantastic novel in the Western tradition, he is not easily thought of as an author of anything much resembling sf, though his supernatural and ghost stories – in particular "The Turn of the Screw" (27 January-16 April Collier's Weekly) – are central demonstrations of the power of Fantastika to convey cultural dis-ease through sophisticated intensities of character-focused language [for more detail on this work, see Henry James in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below].
James is of greater sf interest for The Sense of the Past (1917), technically his last novel, though early draft material dates back to 1901, and the tale remained unfinished at his death. It begins as a relatively conventional Timeslip tale whose American protagonist, immiscibly obsessed with the early eighteenth century through his inheritance of a Georgian town house in London, inexplicably but passionately trades places with his 1820 counterpart. This expectable narrative does however soon begin to explore territory common to more "organized" Time Travel tales, as the protagonist falls in love, and becomes entangled in the nature of time, the ineluctability of history (and the enormity of damage consequent on any attempt to change it). In the end (according to James's extensive dictated notes), his beloved extracts him from the past by herself travelling to the twentieth century. By following her, the fabric of the world (it is possible to understand) is itself saved. [JC]
see also: Shimon Adaf; Joan Aiken; Hilary Bailey; John L Balderston; Club Story; Don D'Ammassa; Fabulation; Carol Hill, Magic Realism; Modernism in SF; New York; Sequels by Other Hands.
Henry James
born New York: 15 April 1843
died London: 25 February 1916
works (very highly selected)
- "The Turn of the Screw" in The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw: Covering End (London: William Heinemann, 1898) [coll: novella first appeared 27 January-16 April Collier's Weekly: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Ivory Tower (London: William Collins Sons, 1917) [ed/intro/Percy Lubbock: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Ghostly Tales of Henry James (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1949) [coll: intro/Leon Edel: hb/Grushkin]
- Stories of the Supernatural (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1970) [coll: vt of the above: hb/Milton Glaser]
nonfiction
- Hawthorne (London: Macmillan and Company, 1879) [nonfiction: Nathaniel Hawthorne: in the publisher's English Men of Letters series: hb/nonpictorial]
links
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