Henry James was born on 15 April 1843 in New York City, New York State, United States, the second of five children born to theologian Henry James Sr. (1811-1882) and Maty Robertson nee Walsh. Henry James Sr. was one of the most wealthy intellectuals of the time, connected with noted philosophers and transcendentalists as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Carlyle, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; fellow friends and influential thinkers of the time ...