The Real Henry James

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The Real Henry James: Childhood and Family

Childhood and Family

BBC Radio 4 - The Real Henry James, Childhood and Family

Henry James reflects on his extraordinary childhood and family in old age.

Towards the end of his life, Henry James pondered his extraordinary childhood and family. Concluded by Henry Goodman.

Henry James was not only a great novelist - he also wrote a great deal of entertaining non-fiction, producing reviews and essays on a wide variety of subjects. To mark the centenary of his death, these five anthologies reveal James through his letters, memoirs, essays and private notebooks.

Episode 5: Childhood and Family
It may seem paradoxical to end a series on Henry James by going back to his childhood - but that's what James himself did in old age. As he approached 70, James began to look back over his life and career - by then he was the only one of five siblings to survive - and found that his early memories and associations multiplied with an almost uncontrollable vividness.

We hear memories of how he roamed free as a young boy on the streets of New York, and of his father, an eccentric religious philosopher who detested 'prigs'. 

We hear too a moving and intimate account of a visit James paid towards the end of his life to the family grave-plot near Harvard - where his parents, his sister Alice, and Wilky, one of his brothers, were buried. James wrote about this only in his private notebooks, which speaks revealingly about the importance of family for him. The programme ends with a passage about the quest for religious faith, and with James's great motto in life, "e kind, be kind, be kind..."
The anthology has been selected by Professor Philip Horne of University College London, who is founding General Editor of a major scholarly edition of James's fiction and has re-transcribed the notebooks for an authoritative new edition.

Reader: Henry Goodman
With introductions by Olivia Williams

Producer: Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4.

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The great writer is revealed through his letters and memoirs. Read by Henry Goodman.

To mark the centenary of Henry James's death, the great writer is revealed through his letters and memoirs. Read by Henry Goodman. With introductions by Olivia Williams.

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