Henry James - (1843 - 1916)
American novelist, short story and novella writer, essayist, critic, biographer, autobiographer, and playwright.
James is considered one of the great novelists in the English language and the writer at the forefront of the movement toward more realism in literature. By enlarging the scope of the novel, introducing dramatic elements to the narrative tale, using highly self-conscious narrators, and refining the point-of-view technique to a new level of sophistication, he advanced the art of fiction. He also probed a number of social and psychological concerns, such as the artist's role in society, the need for both the aesthetic and moral life, and the benefits of a developed consciousness receptive to the thoughts and feelings of others. Psychological and social questions pervade James's small body of supernatural fiction as well, which uses hauntedness and horror to offer insights into the conscious self and the truth that lies within the human soul. James's best-known Gothic works are the novella The Turn of the Screw (1898) and the ghost stories that he wrote over the course of his long career, notably "The Ghostly Rental" (1876) and "The Jolly Corner" (1908). Absent from these works are the typical Gothic conventions found in other works of the genre, as James concentrates on the internal rather than the external conditions of his fictional subjects.
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