Leon Edel enjoys the reputation of being the foremost literary biographer of his time. That reputation began in 1953 with the publication of Henry James: The Untried Years, 1843-1870, the opening volu...
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Critical Essay by Alfred Kazin
Leon Edel has come to be recognized as the prime authority on the life of Henry James. And at a time when James has been made the subject of so many appreciative but hi...
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Critical Essay by V. S. Pritchett
It is one thing to write a cradle-to-grave biography of a man of genius and to bring to the surface the psychological forces that seemed to form him, as Leon Edel di...
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Critical Essay by Kenneth Atchity
Leon Edel's masterly career in literary psychology, expressed in this superb collection ["The Stuff of Sleep and Dreams: Experiments in Literary Psycho...
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Critical Essay by David Trotter
"If we pierce any artist's legend", Edel claims [in his latest book, Stuff of Sleep and Dreams], "we discover an all-too-troubled human.&#x...
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Critical Essay by Charles Feidelson, Jr.
Mr. Edel's biography of the young Henry James ["Henry James: The Untried Years"] is imposing…. The very notion of devoting so many...
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Critical Essay by Mark Schorer
Mr. Edel [in "The Psychological Novel, 1900–1950"] is intent on examining the developments in fiction since the break that, according to Virginia W...
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Critical Essay by Newton Arvin
In the purely biographical sense, nothing could well exceed the care and the patience with which Mr. Edel has accumulated, over many years, the immense materials for hi...
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Critical Essay by Howard Mumford Jones
[Henry James, the] foremost American novelist, is entitled to rich and ample writing, and Mr. Edel has an encyclopedic knowledge of James. One may admire his pa...
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Critical Essay by William H. Gass
The exact sensuous feel of things was something, on occasion, [Henry James] expressed a clear desire and even a preference for:
He wanted the hour of the day at ...
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Critical Essay by Philip Rahv
With this fifth volume, perhaps somewhat too brashly and summarily entitled The Master, Leon Edel at long last brings to a close his biography of James which has been ap...
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Critical Essay by Quentin Anderson
The last of Leon Edel's five volumes, "Henry James, The Master: 1901–1916," has appeared, and those who have, since the publication of t...
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Critical Essay by Christopher Ricks
In Bloomsbury there are nine characters in search of an author. This Pirandello pirouette was turned by Leon Edel 15 or 20 years ago. Since then, the ratio has rev...
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(Joseph) Leon Edel
Critical Essay by Alfred Kazin
