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Henry James was a born storyteller and also a known critic. He had a keen intelligence and great ambition and he made himself a great writer of fiction. For James, fiction is more or less like a dance; more complicated the steps are, more lively the dance is ; similarly more complicated the story of a fiction is, more interesting it becomes. In American literature, James may be out pointed in single work or parts of work by other Americans, but there is no one there to approach him in quantity of excellent work. In English literature he ranks below our very greatest writers; he is not as versatile as Shakespeare, not as poised as Jane Austen, not as funny as Dickens, nor as candid as D. H. Lawrence, but he kept his own importance because of his varied themes, sharpness of thoughts, a perfect balance between reality and morality and the truthfulness of the story presented. Thus the present work is a detailed study of Henry James´ life and career, the influences that made him think and write over on a varied range of themes, adopting different styles and techniques and the position that he occupied among his contemporaries.

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Dr. Shilpi Bhattacharya. Ph. D. (American Literature), Master of Philosophy and M.A.(English) from Pt. Ravi Shankar Shukla University, Raipur, Chhattisgarh. She has worked as Asst. Professor in private and government colleges of Chhattisgarh. She is currently Asst. Professor in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Raipur.

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