HENRY JAMES and the AMERICAN IDEA

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Of the many contributors who supported and found support from the Atlantic Monthly, Henry James stands apart. James, who came into his own in the pages of the magazine, published stories, reviews, and novels through half a century - and with the Atlantic ocean between himself and the editors in Boston. The second son of the eccentric Swedenborgian philosopher for whom he was named, James spent his peripatetic childhood traveling between the United States and Europe, studying with tutors in Geneva, London, Paris, Bologna, and Bonn. About people raised abroad like James and herself, Edith Wharton would say that they had been "produced in a European glass-house." They were "wretched …