Henry James Letters Database
Permanent URI for this collection
This database is maintained by:
The Center for Henry James Studies
Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska
Greg Zacharias, Director and Co-General Editor
Katie Sommer, Associate Editor, The Complete Letters of Henry James
Henry James (1843-1916) is widely regarded as one of the most important literary figures in the history of U.S. culture. James wrote more than twenty novels, some one hundred short stories, thousands of pages of art and literary criticism, several volumes of travel essays, and several autobiographical volumes. He played a central role in achieving the acceptance in the English-speaking world of fiction as art and an expression of a nation’s artistic production. James’s role in determining the direction of American literature and thus culture is represented in his letters to an extraordinary range of over 1,000 individuals. A complete collection of the letters will enrich by its range and detail our understanding of Henry James’s importance to our cultural legacy, to the way we understand ourselves today as a people, and thus to the way we will conduct ourselves tomorrow.