Miranda Seymour

Henry James left London in 1897 to spend the last two decades of his life in East Sussex where his neighbours included H. G. Wells, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad. In this widely admired study Miranda Seymour aims to cut through 'the mass of evasions ...and misrepresentations' about their relationships with James. She finds that James was cruelly patronizing to protege Wells and to Conrad; that he was annoyed by Ford, an incorrigible romancer; that he envied his rich friend Edith Wharton for her wide readership; that he snubbed Cora Taylor, Crane's lover, after she fled America when her railway-conductor husband was found guilty of murder. Seymour, a descendant of James's close friend, the novelist Howard Sturgis, records how James's critiques of fellow writers often amounted to annihilation and she chronicles his infatuations with handsome young men, including sculptor Hendrik Andersen and poet Rupert Brooke. In this erudite and insightful book that draws on letters and published works, Miranda Seymour vividly recreates the uneasy alliance of writers and personalities in this 'Rye Mafia'.

Miranda Seymour afronta en este libro uno de sus mayores retos como biógrafa: trazar la figura de un padre muy poco común y explorar, de paso, los rincones más secretos de su propia familia. ¿Es posible que alguien ame una casa como si fuera una persona? ¿Que la ame tanto como para someterle no solo su destino individual, sino tambien el de otros?

"Entre 1929 y 1936 una figura de mujer destacó en los Grands Prix y rallies automovilísticos de Europa de América. Hellé Nice (Hélène Deñangle, 1900-1984) era la más profesional y competitiva del reducido grupo femenino presente en los prcarios circuitos de la época, donde la muerte solía ser una más de los participantes."