I have not included letters that are wholly technical or polemic. Such documents belong in a study of James's philosophy, or in a history of its origin and influence. However interesting they might be to certain readers, their appropriate place is not here. A good deal of biographical information about William James, his brother Henry, and their father has already been given to the public; but unfortunately it is scattered, and much of it is cast in a form which calls for interpretation or amendment. The elder Henry James left an autobiographical fragment which was published in a volume of his "Literary Remains," but it was composed purely as a religious record. He wrote it in the third person, as if it were the life of one "Stephen Dewhurst," and did not try to give a circumstantial report of his youth or ancestry. Later, his son Henry wrote two volumes of early reminiscences in his turn. In "A Small Boy and Others" and "Notes of a Son and Brother" he reproduced the atmosphere of a household of which he was the last survivor, and adumbrated the figures of Henry James, Senior, and of certain other members of his family with infinite subtlety at every turn of the page. But he too wrote without much attention to particular facts or the sequence of events, and his two volumes were incomplete and occasionally inaccurate with respect to such details. Accordingly I have thought it advisable to restate parts of the family record, even though the restatement involves some repetition. Finally, I should explain that the letters have been reproduced _verbatim_, though not _literatim_, except for superscriptions, which have often been simplified. As respects spelling and punctuation, the manuscripts are not consistent. James wrote rapidly, used abbreviations, occasionally "simplified" his spelling, and was inclined to use capital letters only for emphasis. Thus he often followed the French custom of writing adjectives derived from proper names with small letters--_e.g._ french literature, european affairs. But when he wrote for publication he was too considerate of his reader's attention to distract it with such petty irregularities; therefore unimportant peculiarities of orthography have generally not been reproduced in this book. On the other hand, the phraseology of the manuscripts, even where grammatically incomplete, has been kept. Verbal changes have not been made except where it was clear that there had been a slip of the pen, and clear what had been intended. It is obvious that rhetorical laxities are to be expected in letters written as these were. No editor who has attempted to "improve away" such defects has ever deserved to be thanked.