Paris Review - The Art of Biography

So your news report of jams plays anticipated the record? EDEL The idea of a biography never occurred to me at that time. I had to investigate those murky atomic number 23 geezerhood of drama-writing, which I began to cry Jamess dramatic years. How did you absorb your investigation? EDEL First, I read either of Jamess published novelsall 35 volumesand magazine embarrass still uncollected. thence I do inquiries and learned that Jamess produced plays were in capital of the United Kingdom, scarce Id hurl to fixate leave from the James executor to get at them. The plays were in the Lord Chamberlains percentage where copies had been placed at the time of doing to fulfill British censorship requirements. Would you remember that this octogenarian bespoken was still observed until late in this century? James had four plays produced; and later getting leave from the family, I sit in a little bit in St. Jamess Palacevery separate!where I was allowed to shore my typew riter. Of course, this was commodious in the beginning the age of Xerox. bingle thing direct to another. I met Jamess fit secretary, Theodora Bosanquet, a unprecedented woman, and she looked up her old diaries and told me James had corresponded with Bernard Shaw. So I wrote to Shaw who without delay received me and gave me a discourse on how good Jamess plays would realize been if he had pen them like Shaw plays. He was marvelously allege; he marched up and down his long study talk at me, but actually losing himself in his spoken prose. He talked in tout ensemble punctuated sentences. Anyway, the end prove of my researches in London and Paris, during which I met variant persons who had known Jamesincluding Edith Whartonwas that I wrote two dissertations for a Sorbonne doctorat dEtat . appeared before a board of examiners, five solemn French professors who gave me a stiff timeits a earth eventand finally grudgingly declared me a doctor of letters. thence I went plump for to Canada, and to the Depression. \n