Description
Book SynopsisA biography of Alice Howe Gibbens James - wife of the psychologist and philosopher William James. Encompassing European travel, Civil War profiteering, suicide, a stormy courtship, seances, psychedelic mushrooms, the death of a child, and an enduring love story, it presents a portrait of a nineteenth-century upper-middle-class marriage.
Trade Review“Susan Gunter’s
Alice in Jamesland is absolutely indispensable to anyone interested in the James family. Gunter gives us a rich, full life—the first biography—of Alice Gibbens James, wife of William, and in the process illuminates, with hundreds of details available nowhere else, the private domestic worlds of William and Henry James. An impressive achievement.”—Robert Richardson, author of
William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism"Susan E. Gunter in
Alice in Jamesland draws a sharp, subtle, and sympathetic portrait of the woman whom Henry James Senior announced would be suitable for his ambitious and neurotic son. The fact that Alice Gibbens emerges as the most sane member of the James family does not perhaps mean much; luckily for us all, the family did not value sanity as highly as, say, talent, or the molding of talent toward genius. In her biography, Gunter manages to recreate, with some ingenuity and tact, the life of a wife and mother in these years in an upper- middle-class Boston household; she charts what it was like to care for one of the most needy and talented figures to emerge from that class."—Colm Tóibín,
New York Review of Books"
Alice in Jamesland is a conscientious biography and a valuable addition to the literature on the family."—Ruth Bernard Yeazell,
London Review of Books"The close view of 19th-century domesticity and Alice's role in an endlessly interesting clan makes Gunter's book a welcome addition to the James family literature."—John Williams,
The Second Pass"[
Alice in Jamesland] offers a carefully detailed picture of the rewards and disappointments of the distinctive life of an unsung but essential member of a difficult but fascinating family."—Paul Armstrong,
Common Knowledge"Gunter's book is likely to remain the definitive biography of Alice Howe Gibbens James for the foreseeable future. A must read for everyone interested in the ever expanding 'Jamesland' lying at the midst of our intellectual history."—Anthony Louis Marasco,
American StudiesTable of ContentsList of FiguresList of IllustrationsList of AbbreviationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPrologue1. Stirrings2. New Ventures3. He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not4. Alice in Jamesland5. The Grief Child6. New Directions7. 95 Irving Street and Beyond8. On Sabbatical9. The Will to Endure10. To Nauheim11. Mendings
12. A Form of Use
13. Lull Before the Storm
14. The Poet in Her
15. Last Things
16. The Philosopher's Widow
17. Passages
18. What to Make of a Diminished Thing
Genealogy Charts
Alice Howe Gibbens James Genealogy Chart
William James Genealogy Chart
Illustrations
Notes
Index
