Introduction to The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James

The autobiographic fragment dates from an earlier period. He had often been urged by members of his family to express his religious philosophy under the form of a personal evolution of opinion. But egotistic analysis was less to his taste than enunciation of objective results; so that, although he sat down to the autobiographic task a good many times, it was at long intervals; and the work, " Society the Redeemed Form of Man," as well as the one now first published, were both written after the Autobiography was begun. The Stephen Dewhurst, whose confessions it is supposed to be, is an entirely fictitious personage. The few items of personal and geographic fact he gives have been rectified in foot-notes, so as to be