WRITTEN LIVES

WRITTEN LIVES

English translation by Margaret Jull Costa
Design by Semadar Megged
2006, Great Britain by Canongate Books







Henry James died on the evening of February, 28, 1916, at the age of seventy-two, after a long illness during which he suffered attacks of delirium: one day he dictated two letters as if he were Napoleon, one of them addressed to his brother Joseph Bonaparte, urging him to accept the throne of Spain. Months before, on recovering from the first such attack, he had been able to describe how, when he fell to the floor convinced that he was dying, he had heard in the room a voice not his own saying: "So it has come at last-the Distinguished Thing! "