In November revisits America after absence of six years. Lionized in New York. Returns to Quincy Street for Christmas and sees ailing brother Wilky for the first time in ten years. In January visits Washington and Henry and Clover Adams and meets President Chester A. Arthur. Summoned to Cambridge by mother’s death, January 29 (“the sweetest, gentlest, most beneficent human being I have ever known”). All four brothers are together for the first time in fifteen years at her funeral. Alice and father move from Cambridge to Boston. Prepares a stage version of “Daisy Miller” and returns to England in May. William, now a Harvard professor, comes to Europe in September. Proposed by Leslie Stephen, James becomes member, without the usual red tape, of the Atheneum Club. Travels in France in October to write A Little Tour in France (published 1884) and has last visit with Turgenev, who is dying. Returns to England in December and learns of father’s illness. Sails for America but Henry James Sr. dies December 18, 1882, before his arrival. Made executor of father’s will. Visits brothers Wilky and Bob in Milwaukee in January. Quarrels with William over division of property—James wants to restore Wilky’s share. Macmillan publishes a collected pocket edition of James’s novels and tales in fourteen volumes. Siege of London and Portraits of Places published. Returns to Bolton Street in September. Wilky dies in November. Constance Fenimore Woolson comes to London for the winter.

1884–86

Goes to Paris in February and visits Daudet, Zola, and Goncourt. Again impressed with their intense concern with “art, form, manner” but calls them “mandarins.” Meets John Singer Sargent and persuades him to settle in London. Returns to Bolton Street. Sargent introduces him to young Paul Bourget. During country visits encounters many British political and social figures, including W. E. Gladstone, John Bright, and Charles Dilke. Alice, suffering from nervous ailment, arrives in England for visit in November but is too ill to travel and settles near her brother. Tales of Three Cities (“The Impressions of a Cousin,” “Lady Barberina,” “A New England Winter”) and “The Art of Fiction” published in 1884. Alice goes to Bournemouth in late January. James joins her in May and becomes an intimate of Robert Louis Stevenson, who resides nearby. Spends August at Dover and is visited by Bourget. Stays in Paris for the next two months. Alice takes rooms in London in the fall of 1885. James moves into a flat at 34 De Vere Gardens in Kensington in early March 1886. The Bostonians serialized in Century (Feb. 1885–Feb. 1886; published 1886), The Princess Casamassima serialized in Atlantic Monthly (Sept. 1885–Oct. 1886; published 1886).

1886–87