Intensely Family: The Inheritance of Family Shame and the Autobiographies of Henry James

By Carol Holly

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 Interpreting the act of autobiography as a biographical event, Holly also draws on a collection of James's largely unpublished correspondence with his sister-in-law and nephew from the period when he was writing A Small Boy and Notes .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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 029914724X
• ISBN13: 9780299147242
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"