Volume 27, Number 21 & 22 · January 22, 1981
A Family Romance
By Rosemary Dinnage
Alice James: A Biography
by Jean Strouse
Houghton Mifflin, 367 pp., $15.00
The Death and Letters of Alice James biographical essay, by
selected correspondence edited, with a Ruth Bernard Yeazell
University of California Press, 214 pp., $12.95
Henry James, Letters Volume III: 1883-1895
edited by Leon Edel
Harvard University Press/Belknap, 579 pp., $20.00
Alice James's life was tragic but she dares us to pity her. 'You poor child,' wrote her brother William, with the uneasy condescension that characterized his relationship with her, 'stifling slowly in a quagmire of disgust and pain and impotence.' She fought back grimly: his letter, so amusing, had made her roar with laughter—'I may not have a group of Harvard students sitting at my feet drinking in psychic truth, [but] I shall not tremble, I assure you, at the last trump.' She might prefer honest dislike from us rather than pity; and indeed this gallant and intelligent woman was spiteful, bitter, and very easily dislikable.
Review, 3703 words
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