ABSTRACT
William James was born in New York City on January 11, 1842, the first child of Henry James and his wife, Mary, who had married in the summer of 1840. Henry James had been a restless and defiant young man who bristled at the authority of his father, William James Sr., a wealthy and influential businessman; educators; and the Calvinist Presbyterian church in which he was raised. At Union College in Schenectady, New York, which his father insisted he attend, Henry had a reputation for drunkenness. The children’s lives were disrupted by the family’s peripatetic way of living: they were educated by a revolving cast of tutors, with whom Henry repeatedly became dissatisfied, or dropped into one school and another; they could not form lasting childhood friendships; and most of all, they grew up surrounded by their father’s anxieties and depression.
