"The James Family, a true American dynasty, gave the world three famous children: Henry, a novelist of genius; William, an influential philosopher and psychologist; and Alice, an invalid who became a feminist icon, despite her sheltered life and struggles whit mental illness. Two other brothers, Wilkie and Bob, served bravely in the Civil War but were then forced to earns their own livings on America's rough frontiers, far from their family's cosmopolitan world. Their mother's sense and acumen lent the family some stability, but the siblings were all nurtured, inspired, and damaged by their mercurial father, setting the stage for their intense rivalries and extraordinary achievements.
Paul Fisher's masterly biography follows the five "hotel children" - as Henry called them - an their parents through their travels across the Atlantic; interludes in Newport and Cambridge; and William's and Henry's later adventures in London, Paris, and Italy. Henry's ambition would spur him to write Daisy Miller, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Turn of the Screw; William's intellectual rovings would inspire The Varieties of Religious Experience and the distinctly American philosophy of pragmatism; and Alice's wry genius would illuminate the story behind the scenes in her remarkable diary. Yet despite the family's devotion to the pursuit of new ideas and new ways of living, theirs was a time of restrictive standards, and Fisher provides a captivating account of the conflicts that shaped this brilliant family -bitter struggles with depression, alcoholism, and panic disorders; repressed affections and sexual desires; and intellectual and emotional jealousies.
House of Wits is a revealing cultural history that revises and completes our understanding of its remarkable protagonists and the changing world in which the came of age"
(Tomado de la tapa del libro)
Henry y William James
18JUL-15AGO013
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