Intensely Family: The Inheritance of Family Shame and the Autobiographies of Henry James: Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography

In 1911, at the age of 68, Henry James began A Small Boy and Others with the intent of writing a memoir of his brother William and other members of his family. Within months, however, James's interest in others was replaced by a desire to trace his personal development. Subsequently, he began a lengthy examination of both his own past and the psychological heritage of the James family in a two-volume autobiography, A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother. Through the process of writing his autobiography, James maintained that “at every step of the process [he was becoming] . . . more intensely ‘family.’”

Documenting the rich connotations of James's phrase “intensely family,” Carol Holly examines the shame–based psychology bred by his parents and the impact of that psychology on James's literary career. Interpreting the act of autobiography as a biographical event, Holly also draws on a collection of James's largely unpublished correspondence with his sister–in–law and nephew from the period when he was writing A Small Boy and Notes . She provides a contextual interpretation of the autobiographies and offers a detailed look at the complex emotional life of James the autobiographer.