William Wetmore Story and His Friends

Last updated

William Wetmore Story and His Friends
Title page of William Wetmore Story (Boston, 1903).png
Title page of the first US edition
Author Henry James
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre Biography
Publisher William Blackwood and Sons (UK)
Houghton Mifflin (US)
Publication date
7 October 1903
Media typePrint
PagesVolume one, 371
volume two, 338

William Wetmore Story and His Friends is a biography of sculptor William Wetmore Story by Henry James, published in 1903. James concentrated on the "friends" of the title, who included Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, James Russell Lowell, and other figures more prominent than Story himself.

Contents

Summary and themes

James had met William Wetmore Story in Rome in the 1870s and often enjoyed his hospitality. James didn't take Story very seriously as an artist, though, but regarded him as more of a wealthy dilettante. After Story's death in 1895 his family approached James about writing a biography. James found the project a difficult one because he didn't think there was much to say about Story's own artistic efforts. So he made the book into more of a reminiscence on Italy and the many notable people Story had known. James did discuss Story's most significant works, the statues Cleopatra and the Libyan Sybil.

James quoted from fine letters written to Story by the Brownings and other noteworthy friends. He also worked the Italian background for all it was worth. As James put it in a letter to William Dean Howells: "There is nothing for me but to do a tour de force, or try—leave poor W.W.S. out, practically, and make a little volume on the old Roman, Americo-Roman, Hawthornesque and other bygone days."

Critical evaluation

Critics have generally been kind to this book, perhaps because they realize how difficult it is to write a biography on an insignificant subject. The Encyclopædia Britannica , for instance, calls the book "an entertaining account of Story's life in Rome." James' evocation of old Rome and the Italian countryside has been praised as charming and lovely, much like his essays in Italian Hours .

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Bellarmine</span> Italian Jesuit cardinal and saint (1542–1621)

Robert Bellarmine, SJ was an Italian Jesuit and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was canonized a saint in 1930 and named Doctor of the Church, one of only 37. He was one of the most important figures in the Counter-Reformation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Severn</span> English painter

Joseph Severn was an English portrait and subject painter and a personal friend of the English poet John Keats. He exhibited portraits, Italian genre, literary and biblical subjects, and a selection of his paintings can today be found in some of the most important museums in London, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry James</span> American and British writer (1843–1916)

Henry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Henry Newman</span> English cleric and cardinal (1801–1890)

John Henry Newman was an English theologian, academic, philosopher, historian, writer, and poet, first as an Anglican priest and later as a Catholic priest and cardinal, who was an important and controversial figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s, and was canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leigh Hunt</span> English critic, essayist and poet (1784–1859)

James Henry Leigh Hunt, best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederick Rolfe</span> British writer and photographer (1860–1913)

Frederick William Rolfe, better known as Baron Corvo, and also calling himself Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe, was an English writer, artist, photographer and eccentric.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Russell Lowell</span> American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat (1819–1891)

James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets that rivaled the popularity of British poets. These writers usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Wetmore Story</span> American sculptor, art critic, poet, and editor

William Wetmore Story was an American sculptor, art critic, poet, and editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Protestant Cemetery, Rome</span> Non-catholic cemetery in Rome, Italy

The Non-Catholic Cemetery, also referred to as the Protestant Cemetery or the English Cemetery, is a private cemetery in the rione of Testaccio in Rome. It is near Porta San Paolo and adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius, a small-scale Egyptian-style pyramid built between 18 and 12 BCE as a tomb and later incorporated into the section of the Aurelian Walls that borders the cemetery. It has Mediterranean cypress, pomegranate and other trees, and a grassy meadow. It is the final resting place of non-Catholics including but not exclusive to Protestants or British people. The earliest known burial is that of a Dr Arthur, a Protestant medical doctor hailing from Edinburgh, in 1716. The English poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as Russian painter Karl Briullov and Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci are buried there.

<i>Daisy Miller</i> Novella by Henry James

Daisy Miller is a novella by Henry James that first appeared in The Cornhill Magazine in June–July 1878, and in book form the following year. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a sophisticated compatriot of hers. His pursuit of her is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates when they meet in Switzerland and Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Richmond (painter)</span> English painter

George Richmond was an English painter and portraitist. In his youth he was a member of The Ancients, a group of followers of William Blake. Later in life he established a career as a portrait painter, which included painting the portraits of the British gentry, nobility and royalty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giuseppe Gioachino Belli</span> Italian poet (1791–1863)

Giuseppe Francesco Antonio Maria Gioachino Raimondo Belli was an Italian poet, famous for his sonnets in Romanesco, the dialect of Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Page (painter)</span> American painter and portrait artist (1811–1885)

William Page was an American painter and portrait artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Chandler Moulton</span> American poet (1835–1908)

Louise Chandler Moulton was an American poet, story-writer and critic. Contributing poems and stories of power and grace to the leading magazines, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The Galaxy, the first Scribner's, she also published a half-dozen very successful books for children, Bedtime Stories, Firelight Stories, Stories Told at Twilight, and others that were considered popular in their day. She collected a few of her many adult tales into volumes, Miss Eyre of Boston and Some Women's Hearts. It is in Boston that she did the greater part of her work, including her books of travel, Random Rambles and Lazy Tours, published her four volumes of poetry, and edited and prefaced biographies, A Last Harvest and Garden Secrets, and the Collected Poems of Philip Bourke Marston, as well as a selection from Arthur O'Shaughnessy's verses.

<i>The Princess Casamassima</i>

The Princess Casamassima is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1885 and 1886 and then as a book in 1886. It is the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in radical politics and a terrorist assassination plot. The book is unusual in the Jamesian canon for dealing with such a violent political subject. But it is often paired with another novel published by James in the same year, The Bostonians, which is also concerned with political issues, though in a much less tragic manner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waldo Story</span> American sculptor

Thomas Waldo Story was an American sculptor, art critic, poet and literary editor, living for most of his life in Rome, Italy.

<i>Phallos</i> (novella) Novel by Samuel Delany

Phallos (2004) is a novella by American writer Samuel R. Delany, published by Bamberger Books. It was reissued by Wesleyan University Press in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Petow</span> English Franciscan friar

William Petow was an English Franciscan friar and, briefly, a Cardinal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Edward Freeman</span> American painter

James Edward Freeman was an American painter, diplomat, and author. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York City and in Rome, Italy. He expatriated to Rome in 1841 when he was appointed U.S. Consul to Ancona, in the Papal States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Richmond (lawyer)</span> Scottish lawyer

John Richmond (1765–1846) was one of Robert Burns's closest friends and confidants. He was born in Sorn parish at Montgarswood, Ayrshire, Scotland. His father, Henry Richmond, was a merchant in Mauchline and owned Montgarswood Farm that lies near Sorn. This farm passed to James, John's brother, having once been farmed by William Fisher, Burns's Holy Willie.

References