Feinstein seeks to understand why Henry James, Sr., urged by his children to write his autobiography, produced instead an autobiographical sketch of one Stephen Dewhurst entitled Immortal Life. He suggests several possibilities. First, it may have been a literary convention borrowed from the German romantics and employed to call attention to suppressed aspects of the self. A second explanation is that the use of a pseudonym derived from his Swedenborgian

theology and affirmed a belief in an immortal soul separable from his finite body. A third possibility is James's abhorrence of egoism. To these Feinstein adds a fourth '… that illuminates and is illuminated by the others': the pseudonym reflects a conflict over individuation.