This collection of 216 letters offers an accessible, single-volume distillation of the exchange between celebrated brothers William and Henry James. Spanning more than fifty years, their correspondence presents a lively account of the persons, places, and events that affected the Euro-American world from 1861 until the death of William James in August 1910. An engaging introduction by John J. McDermott suggests the significance of the Selected Letters for the study of the entire family.

Legend has tended to preserve Henry James as "The Master" that Joseph Conrad called him, a rather long-winded Olympian given to great utterances on the art of fiction and the writing of profound psychological studies. The real-life figure revealed in these letters is more terse, and even astringent, a professional writer, an eager observer of life, a man who delighted in meeting people and who made an art of friendship, but who did not hesitate to descend into the marketplace of letters and get the best possible price for his wares.Leon Edel designed this selection to show the kinds of letters James wrote--to his family, his contemporaries, to would-be writers--letters injected with irony and obdurate truth. Here are letters to Conrad, Wells, Galsworthy, Henry Adams, Howells, Edith Wharton, Fanny Kemble--to great Victorians as well as those who bridged that era and the modern one.

The romantic side of Henry James, revealed through his letters to young male friends

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that traces the life and mind of a giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America’s complexities.

The fullest single volume work of reference on James's life and his interactions with the world around him.

Edel has chosen, from the four-volume epistolarium already published, those letters which especially illuminate James's writing, his life, his thoughts and fancies, his literary theories, and his most meaningful friendships. In addition, there are two dozen letters that have never before been printed. In its unity, its elegance, and its reflection of almost a century of Anglo-American life and letters, this correspondence can well be said to belong to literature as well as to biography.

Gathers letters James wrote to his friends, family, and fellow writers in the U.S., Europe, and England.