Of Irish and Scottish extraction, Henry James grew up in New York when it was still dominated by Arcadian panoramas of trees and water. In this touching book, he returns to his youth to recapture the images of his Bohemian family life. In 1913, James had come to feel at ease with the ambivalence of his attraction to his own sex and was able, while writing these memoirs, to reflect more candidly on his feelings than ever in his novels. Populated with a galaxy of Bohemian uncles and cousins, who showed a solid determination to die young and not to enter the professions, Thackeray and Stevenson, this impeccably-written memoir recreates James's life with a humour that his biographers have yet to rival.