Henry James

Henry James was born in 1843, son of a theologian and brother to philosopher William James. He relocated to Europe in his thirties and made his name threading the social and romantic collisions between émigré Americans and the Old World, most famously in The Portrait of a Lady in 1881. His later novels - The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl - grew increasingly experimental, layering ambiguous motives and contradictory impressions until the prose itself worked like Impressionist painting. His 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw became the most analysed ghost story in English and his most adapted work. He became a British citizen in 1915, was nominated three times for the Nobel, and died in England in 1916.