“Do not mind anything that anyone
tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for
yourself.” – Henry James
Born in New York City on this date
in 1843, James aspired to be a writer while still in elementary school and was
into a full-time writing career by his late teens. By his mid-20s he already was regarded as one
of the most skillful writers in America.
Ultimately, he relocated to Europe and eventually settled in England for
the last 40 years of his life.
A major figure in trans-Atlantic
literature, he developed a fundamental theme of the innocence and exuberance of
the New World clashing with the corruption and wisdom of the Old; a theme illustrated
in novels like Daisy Miller (1879), The Portrait of a
Lady (1881), and The Bostonians (1886).
James wrote hundreds of short
stories, novels, books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and
plays, earning numerous writing awards along the way. He was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize
in Literature.
In an interview shortly before his
death in 1915, he passed along this advice to aspiring writers:
"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to,” he said. Adding, “I think I don't regret a single
'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain
occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace,”
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