Leon Edel enjoys the reputation of being the foremost literary biographer of his time. That reputation began in 1953 with the publication of Henry James: The Untried Years, 1843-1870, the opening volume of the biography for which he is still probably best known. Edel's importance as a biographer, however, extends well beyond his work on James. In 1947 he wrote a sketch titled James Joyce: The Last Journey; in 1953 he completed the biography of Willa Cather that his friend E. K. Brown had been working on at his death; his introduction to his edition of The Diary of Alice James (1964) provides the first important biographical sketch of the novelist's sister; in 1970 appeared his revealing monograph on the life of Henry David Thoreau; Bloomsbury: A House of Lions (1979) is his first experiment in group biography. While at work on these examples of the biographer's art, he was writing essays that serve...