Henry James was born on 15 April 1843 in New York to a wealthy and intellectual family and as a youth travelled widely and studied in Europe. He briefly studied law at Harvard before he took up writing full-time. His first novel, Watch and Ward, was published in 1871 and many followed including Roderick Hudson (1875), Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Awkward Age (1899), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904). He also wrote short stories, reviews, biographies, plays and travel books. After a brief period in Paris, James moved to London.He later settled in Rye in Sussex and became a British citizen in 1915. Henry James died on 28 February 1916.