Labour of love reveals the James hothouse

House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family. Paul Fisher, Little, Brown, €21.55

House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family. Paul Fisher, Little, Brown, €21.55

When asked for a comment by journalists while attending the premiere of his brother Dominic’s play, Prosperity Be Damned, at the Gaiety Theatre in 1959, Brendan Behan is said to have remarked sourly, ‘‘geniuses are not born in litters.”

It may be true, but as far as Henry James Senior was concerned, if geniuses could not be born ...