This comprehensive account of the writing life of Henry James aims at providing a critical overview of all his important writings, firmly set in two contexts: that of James's practical career as a novelist in America, England and Europe; and that of the literary and intellectual climate of his time.

After paying particular attention to James's American upbringing and literary background, and to the role of Romanticism in his development, it examines the middle period of his writing - from The Portrait of a Lady to The Tragic Muse - to bring out the Victorian and, indeed, European aspects of this crucial period of his career.

Under the chapter heading 'Crisis and Experiment', it follows the decade of the 1890s during which James's radical experimentation with genre and style, allied to his sense of personal crisis, led his writing - in such novels as The Spoils of Poynton and What Maisie Knew - towards the full flowering of his Modernist period at the very turn of the century.

A final chapter on James as 'Master and Modernist' gives full weight to his masterpieces, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl, and also to the extraordinary vitality and continuing innovation of his non-fictional writing up till his death in 1916.