After a cosmopolitan education in America, France, Germany and Switzerland, Henry James left his native America for Europe in 1869. He lived for a while in Italy and in Paris, and finally settled down in England, where he spent the last forty years of his life, taking out papers of naturalization in 1915. He was an amazingly prolific writer in a number of literary forms - the novel, the short story, literary criticism, essays on the pictorial arts, the drama. He combined this literary activity with an unflagging pursuit of social life, in which he delighted to practise his virtuosity as a conversationalist. Although he failed to achieve the success as a dramatist which he so much desired, he himself said that the theatre had given him 'a mastery of fundamental statement', and his novels were clearly influenced by the lessons which he had learned when writing for the stage. Michael Swan, widely known as a student and critic of Henry James's work, edited and provided introductions for a selection of James's short stories, and A Little Tour of France. Apart from his critical writings, he is the author of the travel books Ilex and Olive and The Temples of the Sun and Moon.