Henry James married Mary Robertson Walsh and, on April 15, 1843, the novelist Henry James was born in New York. Months later, the family visited Europe for the first time. The trip was brief, and the family returned to spend the next ten years in New York. In 1855, the family set off again. This time they numbered four boys and one girl. They remained abroad for a few years, and the children went to a succession of schools in Switzerland, France, England, and Germany.

After their return, the family settled in Newport, Rhode Island. Beginning in 1864, under the influence of W. D. Howells, James devoted his life to literature and began publishing criticism and short stories in 1865. His reputation began to grow in 1870, with his stories about the "American Girl," which he modeled on his cousin Minnie Temple — who died that same year at the age of twenty four. By 1875, he had decided to live abroad.

He planned to live in Paris, but, by 1876, James had settled in London, where he published his first novel, Roderick Hudson. James achieved fame and monetary success from Daisy Miller in 1878, and The Portrait of a Lady in 1881. In 1883, almost two years after his mother's death, the first collected edition of his works appeared in fourteen volumes.

James had success in travel writing, essays, and as a journalist, but his attempt to break into playwriting in the 1890s was humiliating. The audience booed James off the stage after a production of Guy Domville in January of 1895. He gave up drama and returned to fiction. During this year, he recorded the "germ" in his notebook that would become The Ambassadors.

James continued writing novels and traveling. He made an extensive tour of the United States in 1904 and 1905. He returned to London and found some success with plays until his health began to decline in 1909. He received two honorary degrees from Harvard in 1911 and Oxford in 1912. When the United States did not enter World War I, James registered his protest by becoming a British citizen in 1915. He died on February 28, 1916, in London but not before being awarded the Order of Merit by King George V. His ashes were eventually buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a memorial plaque was placed in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.