Henry James was born in New York on April 15, 1843. The most conscientious of artists, his motive for writing lay in the impulse to represent those things in life that roused his own interest and curiosity, making no concession to “what the public wants.” His fiction began with Watch and Ward (1871), A Passionate Pilgrim (1875), Roderick Hudson (1875), and The American (1877). With his novella Daisy Miller, he reached a larger public in 1878. The Portrait of a Lady, agreed upon as his masterpiece, appeared in 1881 when he was at the height of his powers. James was also a critic of exquisite taste. His non-fiction works include, French Poets and Novelist (1878), Life of Hawthorne (1879), Partial Portraits (1888), and The Lesson of Balzac (1905). His gift for conveying the special flavour and distinction of places found expression in several volumes of impressions of travel, such as Portraits of Places (1884), A Little Tour in France (1884), and The American Scene (1906). He died in London in 1916 at the age of seventy-two.