Henry James was born in New York in 1843 and was educated in Europe and America. He left Harvard Law School in 1863, after a year's attendance, to concentrate on writing, and from 1869 he began to make prolonged visits to Europe, eventually settling in England in 1876.

His literary output was prodigious and of the highest quality: more than ten outstanding novels, including The Portrait of a Lady and The American; countless novellas and short stories; as well as innumerable essays, letters, and other pieces of critical prose. Known by contemporary fellow novelists as 'the Master', James died in Kensington, London, in 1916.

Frances Wilson is a biographer and critic. Her most recent book Guilty Thing- A Life of Thomas De Quincey was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction 2016 and shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circles Award, the LA Times Book Awards, and the BIO Plutarch Prize. It was named Book of the Year in the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Spectator, and Telegraph, and cited by Booklist as one of the ten best-reviewed books in America during 2016. How to Survive the Titanic- Or, the Sinking of J Bruce Ismay won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth won the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Award. She lives in London.