The Real Right Place of Henry James: Homes and Haunts

Abstract

This essay places Henry James's stories, "The Birthplace," "The Real Right Thing," and "The Death of the Lion," in relation to his travel writing (English Hours and American Notes) and his own home, Lamb House in Rye, Sussex, as aspects of his response to a tradition of literary homes and haunts. Washington Irving's Sketchbook and his home, Sunnyside, provide precedents for later American literary pilgrimages to Stratford on Avon such as that by the popular collector of homes of the great, Elbert Hubbard. Despising commercial intrusion into authors' lives, James revisited Sunnyside as a refuge for the American literary past while safeguarding his own literary shrine.