A stranger in his own land

A stranger in his own land

In 1903, from his quiet corner of Sussex, Henry James found himself gripped by a yearning to revisit America, “[m]y native land, which time, absence and change have, in a funny sort of way, made almost as romantic to me as ‘Europe’ … used to be”. To his brother William he wrote of his desire to see again not only the places of their youth, such as New York and Albany, but “to go to the West and the South, and even, dreamably, to Mexico”. It was …