Imagining Henry: Henry James as a Fictional Character in Colm Tóibín's The Master and David Lodge's Author, Author

Beginning with a discussion of the famous episode in Lyndall Gordon's A Private Life of Henry James of the disposal of Constance Fenimore Woolson's clothes, this article explores the hybrid genre of the "biographical novel" through a comparison of Colm Tóibín's The Master and David Lodge's Author, Author. There are some striking similarities between these two works, and this reveals the extent to which Henry James's version of his own life has given shape to all subsequent accounts of it. At the same time, each novelist gives us a Henry James in his own image, and Harold Bloom's theory of literary history helps us to understand how Lodge and Tóibín have attempted to overcome the influence of a writer that each of them holds in very high regard.