Arriving in Paris in November, he takes rooms at 29 Rue de Luxembourg (since renamed Cambon). Becomes friend of Ivan Turgenev and is introduced by him to Gustave Flaubert’s Sunday parties. Meets Edmond de Goncourt, Émile Zola, G. Charpentier (the publisher), Catulle Mendès, Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, Ernest Renan, Gustave Doré. Makes friends with Charles Sanders Peirce, who is in Paris. Reviews (unfavorably) the early Impressionists at the Durand-Ruel gallery. By midsummer has received $400 for Tribune pieces, but editor asks for more Parisian gossip and James resigns. Travels in France during July, visiting Normandy and the Midi, and in September crosses to San Sebastian, Spain, to see a bullfight (“I thought the bull, in any case, a finer fellow than any of his tormentors”). Moves to London in December, taking rooms at 3 Bolton St., Piccadilly, where he will live for the next decade.

1877

The American published. Meets Robert Browning and George du Maurier. Leaves London in midsummer for visit to Paris and then goes to Italy. In Rome rides again in Campagna and hears of an episode that inspires “Daisy Miller.” Back in England, spends Christmas at Stratford with Fanny Kemble.

1878

Publishes first book in England, French Poets and Novelists (Macmillan). Appearance of “Daisy Miller” in Cornhill Magazine, edited by Leslie Stephen, is international success, but by publishing it abroad loses American copyright and story is pirated in the United States. Cornhill also prints “An International Episode.” The Europeans is serialized in Atlantic. Now a celebrity, he dines out often, visits country houses, gains weight, takes long walks, fences, and does weight lifting to reduce. Elected to Reform Club. Meets Tennyson, George Meredith, and James McNeill Whistler. William marries Alice Howe Gibbens.

1879

Immersed in London society (“dined out during the past winter 107 times!”). Meets Edmund Gosse and Robert Louis Stevenson, who will later become his close friends. Sees much of Henry Adams and his wife, Marian (Clover), in London and later in Paris. Takes rooms in Paris, September–December. Confidence is serialized in Scribner’s and published by Chatto & Windus. Hawthorne appears in Macmillan’s “English Men of Letters” series.

1880–81

Stays in Florence (March–May) to work on The Portrait of a Lady. Meets Constance Fenimore Woolson, American novelist and grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper. Returns to Bolton Street in June, where William visits him. Washington Square serialized in Cornhill Magazine and published in the United States by Harper & Brothers (Dec. 1880). The Portrait of a Lady serialized in Macmillan’s Magazine (Oct. 1880–Nov. 1881) and Atlantic Monthly; published by Macmillan and Houghton, Mifflin (Nov. 1881). Publication both in United States and in England yields him the then-large income of $500 a month, though book sales are disappointing. Leaves London in February for Paris, the south of France, the Italian Riviera, and Venice, and returns to London in July. Sister Alice visits with her friend Katharine Loring. James goes to Scotland in September.

1881–83