William James (1842-1910) the noted psychologist, was
an older brother. Henry James is called an "international novelist" because
he lived mostly abroad and laid the scenes of his novels in both Europe and
America. His sympathy with England in the European war caused him to become
a British subject in 1915, eight months before his death in 1916.
Like Howells, James was a leader in modern realistic fiction. His work has
been called the "quintessence of realism." But instead of selecting, as
Howells does, the well-known types of the average people, James prefers to
study the ordinary mind in extraordinary situations, surroundings, and
combinations. For this reason, his characters, while realistically
presented, rarely seem well-known and obvious types.
James was the first American to succeed in the realistic short story, that
is, the story stripped of the supernatural and romantic elements used by
Hawthorne and Poe. James selects neither a commonplace nor a dramatic
situation, but chooses some difficult and out-of-the-way theme, and clears
it up with his keen, subtle, impressionistic art. _A Passionate Pilgrim_,
_The Madonna of the Future_, and _The Lesson of the Master_ are short
stories that show his abstruse, unusual subject matter and his analytical
methods.
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