journals that "Henry Jr....was very friendly. Being a literary youth he gave me advice, as if he had been eighty, and I a girl."

His first published work was a review of a stage performance, "Miss Maggie Mitchell in Fanchon the Cricket", published in 1863. About a year later, "A Tragedy of Error", his first short story, was published anonymously. James's first literary payment was for an appreciation of Sir Walter Scott's novels, written for the North American Review.