On Writers and Writing

“To read On Writers and Writing from cover to cover, and in the order Gorra has arranged, is an experience that surpasses in reward any contemporary writing workshop or literature seminar.” —Katherine Chen, Daily Telegraph “Gorra is the ideal curator of James’ essays … Here we see classic James, as in the essential essay ‘The Art of Fiction,’ as well as his reviews of contemporary novels, expansive memorials and valedictions, and examinations of the forms of fiction.” —Nick Ripatrazone, The Metropolitan Review “Gorra is a close reader whose understanding of the unity of James’s work arises naturally from his respect for biography and history, as well as form and style. In choosing his collection, he has done honorable service not only to the study of James but to our battered culture.” —Edward Short, City Journal “The 21 pieces take us from one end to the other trace James’s evolution from youthful provocateur to established master — from the crisp witticisms of his early prose to the exquisite intricacies of his later style.” —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post “Though their subject is writing, the essays here dwell still more insistently on the limits and intimacy of conversation … the author is happily privy to ‘all the eagerest and easiest and funniest, all the most winged and kept-up, most illustrational and suggestion, table-talk that ever was.’” —Alicia Rix, TLS

Henry James (1843-1916), the younger brother of the psychologist William James and one of the greatest of American writers, was born in New York but lived for most of his life in England. Among the best known of his many stories and novels are The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw, and The Wings of the Dove.

Michael Gorra is a writer and scholar. His book Portrait of a Novel- Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography. He teaches at Smith College.

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