Henry James was born in New York City on April 15, 1843. His father, also named Henry, was a minister who had inherited wealth. His mother, Mary Robertson Walsh James, was devoted to her husband and five children. Henry was their second son. The first, William, became a Harvard professor and a philosopher whose best-known books, especially Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), are still read today. The younger children were Garth, Robertson, and Alice.

James's father took the family on an extended trip to Europe the year Henry was born. Henry's childhood was spent traveling between a family home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Europe, where the James's spent time in England, France, and Switzerland. In Cambridge and nearby Boston, young Henry came to know the American intellectual and literary stars of the time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William Dean Howells. He was educated by private...