Her Life in Letters (Her Write, His Name)

"The only thing which survives is the resistance we bring to life, & not the strain life brings to us"---so wrote Alice James in 1890 in her diary. The youngest of five children and the only daughter in the James family, she struggled not only against the repression common to women in the nineteenth century but also against the intense competition show more of her famous brothers, William James and Henry James. Suffering from illness and nervous disorders for most of her adult life, Alice James wrote many letters and, while an invalid during the last three years of her life, she kept a journal in which she chronicled the battle between her body and her will in an attempt to bring meaning to her life. Although her journals were ostensibly private, her friend Katharine Loring Peabody indicated that she would have liked to have them published. Alice's brother Henry, however, convinced Peabody that publication would be embarrassing to the family, and so the diary was not published until 1934. Written with directness, humor, and keen observation, James's Diary describes the dilemmas facing a woman of sensitivity and intelligence in a patriarchal society. (Bowker Author Biography) show less