Joseph Leon Edel (1907 – 1997) was an American/Canadian

literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...

and

biographer Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography. Biographers Countries of working life: Ab=Arabia, AG=Ancient Greece, Al=Australia, Am=Armenian, AR=Ancient Rome ...

. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel. The ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

'' calls Edel "the foremost 20th-century authority on the life and works of

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

." His work on James won him both a

National Book Award The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. ...

and a

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

Life and career

Edel was born on 9 September 1907 in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, the son of Fannie (Malamud) and Simon Edel. Edel grew up in

Yorkton Yorkton is a city located in south-eastern Saskatchewan, Canada. It is about north-west of Winnipeg and south-east of Saskatoon and is the sixth largest city in the province. Yorkton was founded in 1882 and incorporated as a city in 1928. ...

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

. He attended

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

and the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

. While at the former he was associated with the Montreal Group of

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

writers, which included F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith, and with them founded the influential ''McGill Fortnightly Review''. Edel taught English and American literature at Sir George Williams University (now

Concordia University Concordia University () is a Public university, public English-language research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College (Montreal), Loyola College and Sir George Williams Universit ...

, 1932–1934),

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

(1953–1972), and at the

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa The University of Hawaii at Mānoa is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Hawaiʻi system and houses the main offic ...

(1972–1978). For the academic year 1965–1966, he was a Fellow on the faculty at the Center for Advanced Studies of

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

. During WWII, Edel trained at Camp Ritchie and is one of the Ritchie Boys. He discussed his time at camp in his memoir ''The Visitable Past''. From 1944 to 1952, he worked as a reporter and feature writer for the left-wing New York newspapers PM and the Daily Compass. Though he wrote on

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

(''James Joyce: The Last Journey'', 1947), Willa Cather (''Willa Cather: A Critical Biography'', 1953) and the

Bloomsbury group The Bloomsbury Group was a group of associated British writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century. Among the people involved in the group were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, a ...

, his lifework is summed up in his five-volume biography of

(''Henry James: A Biography'' 1953–1972). Edel discussed the notion of biography in '' Literary Biography'' (1957), in particular his conviction that literary biography should enfold a subjective author's self-perceptions into his output. Edel's second and third volumes of the James biography earned him the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography"Biography or Autobiography"
''Past winners and finalists by category''. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-19. and a National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1963. He also edited many collections of James' fiction, plays, literary criticism and personal letters. Edel enjoyed privileged access to letters and documents from James' life housed in the Widener Library at Harvard University, after gaining the blessing of members of James' family. He referred to other scholars who sought access in vain as 'trespassers'. The discovery of impassioned but inconclusive letters written in 1875–1876 by James to the Russian aristocrat Paul Zhukovski, while Edel was deep in the process of finishing his biography caused an ethical crisis; his decision was to continue to ignore what he considered a peripheral aspect of the self-identified "celibate" and sexually diffident James's life. Edel did treat James's relationships with novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson and sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen at length, especially in volumes three and four of the biography. After weighing all the evidence, Edel confessed that he was unable to decide whether James experienced a consummated sexual relationship. Although later scholarship and new materials have called into question the accuracy of his portrait of James, Edel's work remains an important source for studies of the author. In October 1996, about a year before Leon Edel died, Sheldon M. Novick published ''Henry James: The Young Master'' (in 2007 Novick also published ''Henry James: The Mature Master''). Novick's volume "caused something of an uproar in Jamesian circles" as, like other more recent biographies of Walt Whitman and John Singer Sargent, it challenged the notion, deriving from a once-familiar paradigm in biographies of homosexuals when direct evidence was non-existent, that James lived a celibate life. Novick also criticized Edel for following a discounted Freudian interpretation of homosexuality "as a kind of failure." The difference of views led to a series of exchanges between Edel and Novick that were published by ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

''. Edel also edited the notebooks and diaries of literary critic Edmund Wilson. His edition (1975-93) appeared in five volumes covering the decades from the 1920s to the 1960s. He died on 5 September 1997.

Personal life

Edel was married three times. He married his first wife Bertha Cohen in 1935. The marriage ended in divorce in 1950. He then married Roberta Roberts and in 1979 that marriage also ended in divorce. His third marriage, to Marjorie Sinclair, lasted until his death in 1997.

Selected bibliography

* ''James Joyce: The Last Journey'' (1947) * ''Willa Cather: A Critical Biography'' (1953) (with Edward Brown) * ''Henry James: The Untried Years 1843–1870'' (1953) * ''Henry James: Selected Fiction'' (Everyman's Library ew American Edition no. 649A, 1953) * ''The Psychological Novel, 1900-1950'' (1955) * ''The Selected Letters of Henry James'' (1955) (editor) * ''Henry James: Parisian Sketches'' (1957) (editor with Ilse Dusoir Lind) * ''Literary Biography'' (1957) * ''The Complete Tales of Henry James'' (1961-64) (editor) * ''Henry James: The Conquest of London 1870–1881'' (1962) * ''Henry James: The Middle Years 1882–1895'' (1962) * ''Henry James: Twentieth Century Views'' (1963) (editor) * ''Henry James: The Treacherous Years 1895–1901'' (1969) * ''Henry James: Stories of the Supernatural'' (1970) (editor) * ''Henry James: The Master 1901–1916'' (1972) * ''Henry James Letters (1843-1875)'' (1974) (editor) * ''Henry James Letters (1875-1883)'' (1975) (editor) * ''Edmund Wilson: The Twenties'' (1975) (editor) * ''Bloomsbury: A House of Lions'' (1979) * ''Henry James Letters (1883-1895)'' (1980) (editor) * ''Edmund Wilson: The Thirties'' (1980) (editor) * ''A Bibliography of Henry James: Third Edition'' (1982) (with Dan Laurence and James Rambeau) * ''Henry James Letters (1895-1916)'' (1984) (editor) * ''Henry James Literary Criticism – Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers'' (1984) (editor with Mark Wilson) * ''Henry James Literary Criticism – French Writers, Other European Writers, The Prefaces to the New York Edition'' (1984) (editor with Mark Wilson) * ''Writing Lives: Principia Biographica'' (1984) * ''Edmund Wilson: The Forties'' (1984) (editor) * ''Henry James: Selected Letters'' (1987) (editor) * ''The Complete Notebooks of Henry James'' (1987) (editor with Lyall H. Powers) * ''Edmund Wilson: The Fifties'' (1987) (editor) * ''The Complete Plays of Henry James'' (1990) (editor) * ''Edmund Wilson: The Sixties'' (1993) (editor) * ''The Visitable Past: A Wartime Memoir'' (2000)

References

External links

Leon Edel biography at University of Saskatchewan archives
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Edel, Leon 1907 births 1997 deaths Ritchie Boys American expatriates in Canada American expatriates in France American male biographers National Book Award winners Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners Writers from Pittsburgh Academic staff of Concordia University University of Paris alumni New York University faculty Wesleyan University faculty McGill University alumni Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters National Book Critics Circle Award winners