The book covers the early years of James' residence in Europe and his meetings with writers such as George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, and James Russell Lowell.

Henry James was an American author who contributed greatly to literary realism in the 19th century. James eventually settled in England and his books often centered around Americans living in Europe. With classics such as Daisy Miller, The Turn of the Screw, and The Portrait of a Lady, James is still one of the most widely read authors today.Percy Lubbock was an English critic and a good friend of Henry James. Lubbock edited and published a vast collection of James' letters just four years after his death.

Examines the life and writings of Henry James including detailed synopses of his works, explanations of literary terms, biographies of friends and family, and social and historical influences.

This is the first substantial reference work in English on the various forms that constitute "life writing." As this term suggests, the Encyclopedia explores not only autobiography and biography proper, but also letters, diaries, memoirs, family histories, case histories, and other ways in which individual lives have been recorded and structured. It includes entries on genres and subgenres, national and regional traditions from around the world, and important auto-biographical writers, as well as articles on related areas such as oral history, anthropology, testimonies, and the representation of life stories in non-verbal art forms.