Author(s): Miranda Seymour

Biography/Memoir

When a man has neither wife not mistress and leads a life which is both orderly and prudent, he does not invite the conventional biographical approach. Henry James was such a man. The richness of his life lies in his words and his relationships.

In A Ring of Conspirators, Miranda Seymour has concentrated on the last twenty years of James's life in England, when he exchanged the frenetic existence of an urban bachelor for that of a sedate country gentlemen, the proud owner of Lamb House in Rye. East Sussex in the 1890s was an area rich in literary figures -- among them H. G. Wells, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad and W.H. Hudson. A Ring of Conspirators, published here in paperback for the first time, examines the tangled alliances and friendships that drew them towards the intriguingly complex Henry James.