Henry James’s New Approach to the Autobiographical Genre: The Growing Consciousness of A Small Boy
Keywords:
Henry James, Autobiography, Consciousness, Imagination, Memory, Europe, ArtAbstract
This article discusses Henry James's approach to autobiography, focusing on his three autobiographical volumes: A Small Boy and Others , Notes of a Son and Brother and The Middle Years . It argues that these works are essential for understanding the rest of James's work as they complete his previous developments during his fifty-year career as a writer. The article also highlights how James delineates mental states rather than external facts, applying his center of consciousness technique to himself, and considers a life of the imagination as adventurous as a life of action. (The abstract and keywords were prepared retrospectively for indexing purposes using AI-assisted tools and editorial review, based on the original article. They did not appear in the original publication.)
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