Known for lengthy psychological novels like The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James was—as revealed in these letters—a man who delighted in meeting people and who made an art of friendship, while remaining a formidable defender of his works and their value in the publishing world. Leon Edel won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his five-volume biography of James, and he has culled this selection of James's witty, observant, and frank letters to Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, and Fanny Kemble.