After a childhood divided between America and Europe, Henry James settled with his family in New England, first in what he regarded as an outpost of Europe, Newport, and later in Cambridge. The family letters (the initial inspiration for this autobiographical enterprise), many of which recount the early career of William James at Harvard and in Germany, also reveal Henry James Sr.’s views on the intellectual, philosophical, and social issues of the time. Henry Jr., aspiring to be "just literary," acknowledges his indebtedness to the widely cultured artist John La Farge, whose friendship he enjoyed during adolescence. The Civil War is recorded through the letters of his younger brother, Wilky, while Henry recalls a Whitmanesque longing for the Union soldiers he met and talked to. The death of a beloved cousin, Mary Temple, who would become the inspiration for some of his greatest fictional heroines, is documented through the passionate, questioning letters she wrote in her final year of life. In The Middle Years James, newly resident in London, gives his impressions of some of the literary "lions" of the time, most notably George Eliot and Tennyson. This first fully annotated critical edition of Notes of a Son and Brother and The Middle Years both offers the reader extensive support in appreciating the demands of James’s late prose and illuminates the context in which one of literature’s most influential figures developed a characteristic voice.

The second volume of Henry James's autobiography, Notes of a Son and Brother, was completed just a few months before his death. Here, James covers the time of the Civil War, discusses his early adulthood, his first efforts at writing fiction, and the death of his beloved cousin, Minny Temple. A moving and insightful book.

Excerpt from Notes of a Son and Brother It may again perhaps betray something of that incorrigible vagueness of current in our educational drift which I have elsewhere so unreservedly suffered to reflect itself that, though we had come abroad in 1855 with an eye to the then supposedly supreme benefits of Swiss schooling, our most resolute attempt to tap that supply, after twenty distractions, waited over to the autumn of the fourth year later on, when we in renewed good faith retraced our steps to Geneva. Our parents began at that season a long sojourn at the old Hotel de l'Ecu, which now erects a somewhat diminished head on the edge of the rushing Rhone its only rival then was the Hotel des Bergues opposite, considerably larger and commanding more or less the view of that profiled crest of Mont-Blanc which used to be so oddly likened to the head and face of a singularly supine Napoleon. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Notes of a Son and Brother is an autobiography by Henry James published in 1914. The book covers James' early manhood and tells of "the obscure hurt" that kept him out of the Civil War, his first efforts at writing fiction, and the early death of his beloved cousin, Minny Temple, from tuberculosis.

This is the last book by James that was published in his life, and it is a second attempt to write an autobiography. It deals with his early adulthood, the influence of the Civil War on his life, and the death of a very close cousin. We publish the world's books. We have the largest collection of classics, and we believe that they are the highest quality, too. Don't take our word for it, peek inside and you'll see why we brag.